


Elua's Nightmare, Part I

by Jon_of_Narva



Series: Elua's Nightmare [1]
Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-03 23:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 35,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2891681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jon_of_Narva/pseuds/Jon_of_Narva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Told from the viewpoint of the Dauphine Sidonie, this novel kicks off just months after the wedding that ended "Kushiel's Mercy". Four of the sharpest minds and strongest wills in Terre D'Ange are swept up in a whirlwind that will test their problem-solving abilities, and Sidonie will be at the forefront. Outwardly willful and strong, she inwardly uneasy with the accident of birth that gives her such authority, and the dreadful responsibility that goes with it.<br/>This work only exists thanks to the imagination and excellence of Jaqueline Carey. What you have here is naught but my tribute to the Best of all possible Worlds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Synopsis; While appearing to be another adventure featuring travel and conflicts in the traditional way, this book is more focused on the personalities of a pair of new characters for this world. It is they who are the source of all the conflict herein.  
> Our story begins with the a message written in an abominable way, bragging of the "liquidation" of Carthage. The writer of that message is a mysterious and very peculiar woman using the name "Phaing", and she leads Sidonie, Imriel, Phedre and Joscelin on a chase that goes disastrously...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has been said that while our enemies give us Warfare, our friends are the ones that give us nightmares.  
> The challenge is for the d'Angeline heroes will be someone who would make the most terrible of enemies... and who is also in desperate need of the kind of healing that only they, and the grace of their Gods, can possibly provide.

**Eluas's Nightmare**

 

_Sidonie_

Part One- Pursuits

Part Two- Phaing

Part Three- Merrin

Part Four- Reckoning

 

Never waste time,  
Never take anyone for granted  
Never leave something important unsaid…. you will never know it when you are speaking to someone for the last time.

 

 

 

 

Call me Sidonie, why should you be any different from everyone else in this story?

It makes me smile now, to imagine your reaction to my words, how at-odds they must be with my reputation. I myself would have been surprised to begin a story in such a fashion… had the story described here never occurred.

I had never thought that the telling of it would fall to me, yet Imriel and his foster-parents all decided that it would be best if I did. They agreed that my point of view was the one best able to describe all these events, our struggles within them, and of course the end results. Central, is how Phe’dre summed it up. Looking back, I enjoy the notion that I was not peripheral to the great doings of what you will call the Heroes of the Realm, on this occasion.  
Yet, at the time, it was quite something else.

I make no apology for lacking Phedre’s brilliant insights or Imriel’s flare for self-depreciating witticisms, or the startling attention to detail they both possess. I am the Dauphine Sidonie de la’ Courcel, the first of my name in an unbroken line of succession stretching back centuries, and I have been privileged to have seen what a tiny thing all of that is in the great schemes of the Gods. So, I tell you now, that I am simply doing the best I can with what I have.

And you know, I’m still smiling when I think of you, dear reader.

You children of my children are reading this because the century of Peace and Promise, bought by our new friends at such cost, is coming to an end. As you unseal these tomes, know that there will be a time coming again for Heroes, they will be needed if our history is any guide. This tale begins in a red marbled Hall in a foreign court where we had taken up a brief residence, with the reading of what had been taken to be just another bit of routine correspondence between heads of state…

 

 

 

 **Part I;**  
**Pursuits**

 

 

_**A late wedding present to the Sun Princess and the Prince of tall trees.** _

  
“With all the fondest hopes that this finds you all well and happy, whole and at peace, it is my joy to inform you that Carthage has been liquidated.

Given your well-known proclivities, I will demand that you not blame yourselves, that would be intolerable to us. In this case, you D'Angelines have been simply too good for your own _good_ , and so it fell to the rest of the world to take out the trash, as it were.

The threat of Carthage doing what they did to you again, to some other victim, was simply too great to ignore. And, as things developed, it was more than a threat. What has come to pass was in fact, inevitable. Rest assured, they are the ones to blame for their fate.

The instigator of your recent misfortunes, who’s name I will not utter even in print, had a few last words in Aragonia that did a thorough job of dishonoring himself. Even in Carthage it was realized that there was not, and never had been, anything Noble about him. He was a thug at heart, a jumped-up street punk with pretensions of empire. His clan was annihilated, for the affront of putting him forward as Princeps… and this triggered an internal struggle for power which coincided nicely with the arrival of the Army of Mercenaries that I had raised. Adventurous folk from the Chowat (as you call it), Skaldians, Illyrian Pirates, a few Caerdicci, and even an Expeditionary Corps from Mnekhet joined in, near 10,000 blades in all. As things turned out, it was more than enough.

I proudly report to you that the Carthaginian Language no longer exists in written form. Even the hardest stone has its limits. As far as it known, no literate native speakers exist either. The threat of that dire spell ever being repeated has been buried for all time.  
We were very thorough. The Dragon must be appeased, after all.  
So, you can stop your fluttering and thank us later.

All of the young folk taken as slaves by the Carthaginians have been liberated and are being repatriated to Aragonia as you read this.

  
I travel alone, or will be soon. So, should you good people come to think that I need to be taken to task, called on to explain myself or whatever it is that you do, simply send me a reply via the same courier service that brought you this gift. They seem to be reasonably efficient, if a painfully non-inquisitive lot.

Good luck, long life and happiness to you all!  
- _Phaing_

 

**1**

 

I did not realize that I had reached out to hold my dear Husband’s hand until the reading of that whole incredible, grotesque message had been finished. It took some time, the syndicated messenger reading it for us hesitated many times and had to be encouraged to continue. At first by Phedre’s urgings, at the end it required Imriel’s impatiently tapping boot to make the poor man finish it. I dare say that he was sweating by the second to last line, and was barely able to stammer out the final line. At that point, Imriel leaped up and snatched the parchment from his hand, and thus by letting go of mine he brought me the realization that I had been clinging to him in a foreign court.

Yes, for a mercy, we were not in the Palace nor even our own Kingdom, my mother and father were not in attendance, and that maddening screed was not heard by the peers of our realm.… as the sender must have intended. The chaos that would have overtaken our court, the city, I had to stop thinking of that lest I grind my teeth so tightly that one of them might break. 

No, it had been re-routed to follow us from the port of Marsilikos, where we had departed 6 days earlier to resolve a crisis. It was not the grim and Earth-shaking sort of crisis that had plagued Imriel, and more recently myself. Wed scarcely three months, we were making a visit to Kyrnos {Corsica} to help ease tensions in a dispute over who would Govern that place. Since it happens to be the fourth largest island in the Southern Ocean and at least one faction was wrongly claiming to have the support of our Crown, a state visit was in order. It did not merit a visit from the Queen herself, and so it fell to a Princess and her Prince to sort it things out.

A rather ordinary crisis, as things go, and a nice little exercise for we who were being groomed to rule. But you would not be reading these words at all if that is what it was destined to be. So, let us take this from where that message was read; the court of the Lord Protector of Ajaccio, on the isle of Kyrnos.

Lord Dumenici was not the leader of any faction that claimed our patronage, and his small army was busy to the north, demonstrating their strength against their strongest foes. No actual fighting had taken place, yet, and we meant to prevent things from escalating. By visiting this court in Ajaccio first, we aimed to prove that we wanted nothing to do with any other factions and their false claims. We would have been happiest if there were to be no fighting at all, and for the half-dozen City States of Kyrnos to continue ruling as usual. All had gone well, until now.

Imriel was so angry that his hands shook as he read that dreadful thing. He re-read several parts before nodding to me; it was as the messenger had read it, word for word.

Our anger was two-fold; the mockery was so blatant that it was ringing in my ears for hours. If it was true, all those lives lost… staggering to think of. Not millions, the population of Carthage was ever sparse, and more so since their attempted conquest of Aragonia, yet even hundreds of thousands was too much to think of with any clarity. The imprisoned Demon was rumored to have cut a swath through the countryside around the city itself, petty revenge on its way back to the desert fastness. I had not felt badly on hearing of that, but now I felt shame. Shame that I had not argued more forcefully for clemency in the aftermath of what had been done to us, to our very minds, for putting it all behind us. Was it my damnable reserve? Should I have said more, could it have been stopped if I had?

I had to shake my head to throw off such thoughts. I resolved to stay in the moment and concentrate on what was happening. Thank the Gods I did, and was able to hold to that. As the adventures of the Montreves go, this was to be far briefer, faster-paced and more intellectually  demanding than what that had come before.

“This madman, this _Fang_ person, has anyone ever heard of the bloody creature before?” Imriel demanded of the room at large. He clearly was not speaking to Phedre , he was handing the note to her as she walked slowly up behind him, without even looking at her. Ah, they knew each other so very well, her curiosity and eagerness to solve problems. Joscelin stood rooted to the spot where he had been standing from the start. His gaze was far away, calculating. I think it was he that first understood something of the nature of the writer of that message, and even before his dear Phedre. I think it may have frightened him.

The Sheriff of this province, who had followed the messenger in, spoke up; “Yes, Highness. Word just reached me of a new rabble-rouser, speaking out in favor of union with Terre D'Ange, and doing a hell of a job of it. Word is that Porto Valla has declared for these lot.” And he sent us, Imriel and myself, a frosty look that none would have dared to give us just an hour ago.

“But… they are Caerdicci to the core over there!” The Lord was grinding his teeth, and staring our way as well. I could understand why; we had arrived with nearly as many armed men on our ship as he had left to garrison his city, and had barely begun to serve as the calming influence we were intended to be. Now we must look to them as if we were working with agents to do just the opposite of what we had come to do.

The Sherriff continued; “Aye, but also very religious over there. This fellow had secret meetings with Yeshuites, Habiru and Eluan missionaries. They tolerate all sorts of cults there, make an industry of it if you ask me." He flinched at the look several of the people in the Hall shot him. "Ahem…. I refer to what a brisk business they do in producing icons of every sort there! As I was saying, all of those leaders were persuaded to speak to each other, and explore the notion that they are all the same religion in spirit, and that they should unite in a common cause. And that since Terre D’Ange is the only nation where one of them holds sway and the others are free to worship, then they ought naturally turn to that nation for patronage. It’s a bit of a mess down there, but it’s a mess that is running in a definite direction.” And his look our way left no doubt about what direction it was heading.

We were dismayed, all but dear Phedre. She could not be distracted from what she held in her hands. Her soft words cut the silence in just the right way to change the situation;

“This was written by a woman.”

She was no less fascinated by this fact than anyone else in the room. And yes, it was taken as fact by all present within moments. Her brilliance as a scholar is inescapable, as the very writer of that message later had to admit.

A woman. While much of the audience was trying to absorb this notion, it simply made me even more angry. I rose at last to go to Phedre's side. There must have been tell-tales that I could have seen and confirmed her judgment, but the very insolence and unwanted _familiarity_ of the text made it impossible for me to concentrate on such details. I simply nodded, a theatrical gesture to show I supported her finding. The angry murmurs died down, but I would have to do more than that to assure our peaceful exit from Ajaccio, or even from this room. The four of us had brought just four guards and two scribes into this court. It has seemed more than enough in what was supposed to be a routine audience. So routine, and dry, that none of us had given a second thought to receiving a message in public.

“Lords and Ladies!” A calm, dignified manner had become second nature to me, to the point where letting emotion show sometimes required effort, I admit that. This was not one of those times. I was angry, every bit as much as my love. “An unspeakable atrocity has been claimed by this Phaing person, and that same person is spreading chaos in your own realm. Now, do any of you believe for an instant that we would sanction the wholesale destruction of a Nation granted clemency by us? Do you see anything in our faces that shows you aught but our shared horror at this… this, _abomination_?”

For a mercy, that was all that was required to soften the mood in the room. I turned to the messenger, a stalwart enough fellow. I name him so because he had not fled the room the moment our attention went elsewhere. “You! Instructions have been given you on how to deliver a reply to the sender of what you just delivered into our presence?”

He nodded, and opened his mouth to say something he’d rather not.  
I spared him that. “Divulge no secrets to me, I care not but that this reply reach the intended ears. Now, for my reply... To the person using the name Phaing; You are to present yourself to me at the earliest possible instant, to explain yourself to my court. We await your reply in Ajaccio. Signed… the usual.” This last I said over my shoulder to one of my scribes, who was already jotting down my words on a fresh sheet of vellum. It is a fine thing to have a competent staff at one’s side.

Turning away from the messenger to spare him any more stammering in such a public place, I put my arm through Imriel’s and walked with him straight to the Lord of Ajaccio. I spoke in a low voice pitched to be heard only he and the adviser hovering at his shoulder.; “I ask you in all earnestness, do you have a few men that can follow that messenger without being seen or suspected?”

“Men you can trust implicitly, and who will be able to pass information back to us as we ride in pursuit?” Imriel added. It has been said that we can finish each others sentences, and there are times when it is a blessing. This was one of those times.

The Lord eyed us both and nodded wth an approving, predatory grin. “It will be my very great honor to help you rid this world of our mutual scourge.”

***

 

The messenger would be leaving in the morning, as it was late in the day and nobody felt safe traveling at night in Krynos at that time. We knew that he would be traveling by land, the messenger had gone straight to the company stables after leaving us, and not a soul connected with his company went near the docks. We had reason to be glad of the Lord’s network of informers that day.

That night we changed out of our formal wear and into a very different set of clothes. It would surprise nobody that by this point in all of our lives, we had all gained the habit of keeping things close at hand that would serve us in an emergency. For all of us, this included the sort of clothing that Favrielle would shudder to see. Wool with leather patches in strategic places was the main component of these clothes, Grey for Joscelin, faded black for Imriel. Subdued colors that would still allow us to tell each other apart at a glance, even at a distance. My own outfit was in a dull brown, which I had chosen because I had noticed how the leather belts and boots stood out against the clothing of the others. If we were to be less noticeable, these details seem to mater. It was not very flattering, another reason for choosing it. Phedre had a darker grey than her consort for her jacket, and a dull green skirts and leggings.

With the doors separating our suite of rooms thrown open so that we could converse back and forth, the 4 of us tested the fit and flexibility of our garb. We’d not wear it to bed, leastwise Imriel and I would not, yet after weeks spent packed away at the very bottom of our trunks it was good to be sure of the stuff. Krynos is a small island and we expected a short chase… but one can never be certain of such things.  
Not ever.

“It itches something fierce.” I mentioned to my Husband.

“Well, you are supposed to be wearing your underwear with it!” And his smile was both charming and insolent at the same time, one that almost begged to be slapped from his face.

“Well, I know _that_ fits!” And a grin of my own made Imri roll his eyes. I was posing, and having myself a little thrill with my pampered skin being roughly stroked by the new, almost raw wool. The fabric had been chosen because it would keep the wearer warm even when wet, not for comfort. The only comfortable things about these clothes were the meticulously made and tested boots, boots that has been treated to look worn and common to the casual observer.

Suddenly, I felt like a pretender, and Imriel caught the shift in my mood instantly. “What troubles you?”

I shook my head. “Nothing terribly important, I hope. But, the three of you, you are so experienced with this sort of thing. Gods, Imri, you walked to the far end of Vralia and back! The only thing that I have ever done that could be called ‘heroic’ by any stretch of the imagination, was being rescued by you and being transported in relative comfort back home!”

“As I recall, there was rather more to it than that.” He let his wry smile go more serious, and put his hands on my shoulders. “We talked about this, not being separated ever again.” And if he had said nothing more, I would still have been bound to go with him. Yet he added more, trying to be the logical one, the one worthy to be a Crown Price one day. “Yes, you were brought up for a different sort of battlefield than I or Joscelin have been trained for. But that does not mean that your sort of battle isn’t waiting right around the corner. In all likelihood, that is precisely what is waiting for us in Porto Valla.“ He stroked my chin as I looked up at him. “You will not be a burden to me, no more than Phe’dre ever was to Joscelin. You will not slow us down, you have a rather bad habit of not complaining even when you are suffering from blood poisoning. You, my fair Dauphine, may just be the saving of us all, as has been the case before.” He let his hands drop. “And you will not shame me or anyone else, if you decide here and now not to come! Our ship is right out there in the harbor. Come to think of it, it could be a handy thing, knowing that you were there, ready to make the hard decisions, or force the Captain to make the right ones.”

I admit, I had to think on that, for about three heartbeats. Dearest Imri, he was twenty-five then, and looked to be thirty. I had no illusions about what could happen to me, I might even come back scarred worse than I had been before, or missing fingers or toes. And even more worrisome, at Aragonia I had learned what it was to be stranded on a hostile shore without a ship for escape. I, and I alone, could make that Captain sail through fire if that was what was required to insure Imriel’s rescue.

I hugged him and gave Imriel the answer he yearned for. “Always and always. No bitch of a terrorist can make me leave your side, for even an instant!”

“Strong words to call someone we have not even met yet.” Joscelin said from the open doorway. Seeing we were fully dressed, he stepped in to check our fit, especially the belts and what hung from them. Weapons, too. There was a large dagger hanging from my left hip, a much smaller one was hidden, yet meant to be found by a search of my person, and an even smaller one that was not going to be found unless I was stripped bare. I had developed a certain amount of paranoia regarding blades being held to me, and was resolved to have some of my own to prevent any such indignity in the future. However, my training in the use of them was lacking at that time.

Once the Queen’s Champion was sure that we knew exactly what loop to use for every strap and buckle, I went to the doorway to see how Phedre was faring. She looked at home in her traveling attire, her never-pregnant body still trim and perfectly balanced. She was there with most of the lamps in the room on the wardrobe, where she was squinting at something that could only be that damnable message.

“Any new clues hidden there?” I asked as I walked to her side. Yes, there it was, fresh parchment never scraped, never used before.

“Many, Highness.” The addition of that last word was so unnecessary, and so very Phedre. “However, little that I can glean as yet.”

“Then please leave off that ugly thing. You should not read after sunset anyway, its no good for the eyes.” She winced, just slightly, and nodded. I had heard that her eyes were getting worse. Reading everything she could find, and working late hours were lifetime habits for her, and she was starting to pay the price. I took the parchment from her, as if to study it myself. “A few clues are better than none. What have you found thus far?”

Phedre smiled and closed her tired eyes. “Firstly, that name is almost certainly an alias. I think it has been used often. The platitudes… I am not entirely sure they are all mocking, and not in a way that should anger you so, dear. They were written quickly and smoothly, while the words used to describe Carthage are slow, deliberate, carefully chosen.” I looked again, and I could see it now. “And this line about ‘fluttering’, … please don’t grip the paper so hard dear, you may damage it. That’s better, it was calculated too.” I breathed easier knowing that, without being sure why. "Calculated, to give a false impression, perhaps."

Joscelin and Imriel had come up silently behind us, practicing walking quietly together. “Does that mean we are being goaded into this? Because, if it does, we should be heading home.”

The thought of not having an adventure with Imri, despite my earlier misgivings, made my head hurt. Ah, yes, I was wanting this, very badly indeed.

“It may, or...” Phedre hesitated.

“Or?” Imriel prompted. He knew his adopted mother so very well, but he had not the temperament to ever become a scholar himself. Patience, something he worked so very hard for, often seemed to be slipping from his grasp at moments like this.

“Or, I don’t know.” She shook her head at him. “Pieces are not fitting together yet. Once we have more, I can say more. But until then, I’d rather not hazard any more guesses, lest I lead us astray before we have even taken our first step.”

***

 

“She was admitting the limits of her knowledge. It takes some courage for someone of her stature to do that, why won’t you let it go?” Imriel held me later that night, after a frantic bout of love-making that we thought was likely to be our last for a while. Pleasantly sore and a little dizzy, I should have been able to drop off to sleep. Instead, I nearly caused us to have an argument.

“She knew something that she was holding back, you saw it too!”

  
Imriel shook his head. “She s _uspects_ something, and that is a very different thing.”

“Oh, you are certain of that? I fear she doubts herself, and that’s ….” I caught the look in his eye. _He_ was sure. “Forgive me!” I knew right away that I was the one in the wrong, and grateful that only Imriel had seen it.

And I knew what he would say next;  
“Done!” He smiled an made a nest of his body for me to curl into. “Now, I’m sure we will be seeing some interesting things soon. You cover a lot of ground when traveling light; I think you will enjoy it, and in the end it may all be a hoax after all. We’d not be paying it any attention were it not for what is happening in Porto Valla.” He yawned and went limp, utterly relaxed and entwined with me. “It could all merely be the work of some lunatic, after all.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

At dawn we were ready to leave, scarce minutes after the messenger had been reported leaving sight of the city. I took stock of our mounted company.

10 horses were all that the ship we arrived on would handle comfortably. This meant that only six of my personal guard could accompany us, and Imriel had chosen those that were the best fighters, men that knew how to fight mounted thanks to him. These were augmented by a further 10 men of Ajaccio who were meant to escort us, and doubtless to keep an eye on us. Our men had left their Lances and heavy shields behind to present a less warlike appearance, and the Lord’s men were handing their own off to attendants when we arrived. They did not want to appear to be better armed or more numerous than our company, as there were still Diplomacy and politics to consider. Their ten to our six guards, and the four of us.

Joscelin and Imriel were worth as much as all the rest of the warriors combined, so I felt well protected indeed. As we were leaving, The Lord Dumenici called to us from a high balcony, still in his sleep-wear, and pointed to a rider approaching us from a side street. This fellow was a native through and through, attired in a light cotton shirt open to the waist and a wide brimmed hat, both of which I was soon to envy. He allowed his horse to walk up and nuzzle Joscelin’s mount while his eyes went a little wide as he surveyed our party.

“All of you?” he asked, clearly meaning the four of us. Without waiting for the obvious answer, he continued in a voice low enough not to carry, even in the early morning stillness. “Then I shall not make the usual flowery greetings, starting instantly. By your manner of dress I assume you do not wish to be burdened with the pleasantries, but I beg you not to take me for an ignorant man.”

“Indeed not, but who are you, and what do you want?” Joscelin asked in the same tone.

“Roccu is my name, I was not chosen to accompany you merely because I speak your language. I am his Lordship’s Huntsman. I am being here as your tracker. Tracking, not game, but a person, yes? My duties are removing poachers and other bad peoples from the Lord’s lands. I am commanded to help you.” We all must have smiled a little too much, because he held up a hand. “Please, place not too much faith in me and what the word ‘tracker’ is meaning. Yes, I can find people, but is not always quickly done. Sometimes bare rock can still tell much, sometimes a muddy field gives nothing but confusion. If this person fly swiftly from you, I may not be able to tell signs as swiftly as the chase goes.” He smiled in a self-depreciating way, and then a harder glint came to his eyes. “But this I promise you; given time, I will find the person you seek, or the place from where he leaves our island. In nine years I have not failed once to find who I was looking for.”

“Then we are glad to have you, Roccu, although you may find this a poor test of your skills. We already know where to start, the port on the other side of this island of yours. And it is not a man we seek, but a woman.” From the way Roccu grimaced, and the look he shot his Lord, I think we nearly lost his interest, until Joscelin added; “One called Phaing.”

That snapped Roccu right back to our company. “Ah, the elusive outlander that has been causing such mischief these last days? A woman … one of yours?” The looks on our faces made him recoil just a bit. “I see not! Pity, we have no description. None that have seen her have much to say on that matter, appearing only at night as she does. Ah, please, to be sure, we may talk and ride at the same time, yes? Let me delay you no more!”

  
Roccu lead us down a street so narrow we all had to ride single file, but it saved us several blocks of travel. I think he must have been eager to show himself valuable to us at the outset, and he did. Insisting on departing without any fanfare was one thing, but being able to slip out of a walled city free of gossiping faces was a rare treat.

 

  ***

 

Horses can usually travel an average of 30 miles in a day. A horse carrying heavy gear or that is out of shape may cover less than 20 miles in a day. All of our horses were lightly burdened and in peak condition, although none of the rest were a match for The Bastard. Horses can gallop at speeds of 30 to 40 miles per hour but they cannot keep up running at these speeds for long. Most horses canter at speeds of 10 to 17 miles per hour, trot at 8 to 10 mile per hour and walk 3 miles per hour. I mention all this because it was over 40 miles to Porto Valla, and when the interior was in a state of unrest, no messenger could be sure of remounts, or even that the station for them would be tended by any friendly hands.

So, we calculated that the messenger would be easy on his mount, going at a pace that would preserve its strength for 2 full days. We did the same, alternating between a brief canter and walking them across the flat lands. I glanced over my shoulder at our ship, the Twilight Rhapsody, and saw it leaving the harbor to meet us at Porto Valla. Our plan was that it should beat us there, by just enough for the Soldiers to deploy. Between the 21 of us and the 66 men at arms on that ship, we hoped to trap our quarry between us.

Ti-Phillipe was on that ship, but not Hugues. I barely knew either man, but I had heard that there were difficulties in a relationship that had lasted as long as I had been alive. These problems had come to a head during this last summer, and Hugues had been assigned to escort some valuable books and messages to La Serenissma 6 weeks before we had departed from the City of Eula. It was hoped that time apart would clear his head of whatever had been bothering him, and ensure a hearty welcome from Ti-Phillipe on his return. I wished them well, and gave that cause of unrest in the house of Montreve little more thought than that.

When I thought of the House of Montreve, it was with the sad realization that it would someday be extinct. The name would remain, as the designation of an estate, but that was all it would be when the childless Phedre and Joscelin passed away and Imriel inherited it. Passing to the Crown, it would be appreciated by our children, and a curiosity to their children. If they had any memory of the last Montreve, it would be as a charming and world-wise old woman. Her portrait would never hang in the Hall of Ancestors.

Eight miles and more beyond Ajaccio we entered the uplands of Kyrnos. This island had a tired and used-up feel to it, colonized and heavily trod upon since before the time of Hellas, yet the highlands had a somewhat fresher feel. Roccu pointed out the village of Cauro ahead of us, and seeing no sign of the men assigned to track the messenger we passed through at the quickest pace we could without causing uproar. A few shouts and one raised fist were all the notice we were paid as we raised a small cloud of dust, clattering down the highway. Once out of sight of anyone in that village, we slowed our pace. It was an hour before midday and we dismounted to walk the horses unburdened, planning to go on that way until we would pause to eat something. I had ridden next to Phedre most of the way, but now I walked next to Irmiel as she went ahead and chatted with Roccu, Joscelin close by.

“How are you feeling about… all this?”

I didn’t have to ask what he meant. Our travels in and out of the mountains of Aragonia had been devilishly rushed, and dangerous affairs, and came to an end I would much rather have forgotten already. Yet all of this felt differently. “I find it exhilarating to be out here with you, at the head of these men, and with them!” I nodded up ahead at his foster parents. “Don’t think me naive, but even if we are just starting, there is a feeling of accomplishment in simply being out here.”

“Just wait.” Was his only comment.

A quarter of an hour later, I was regretting the wool I wore. Sturdy, yes. Practical, common-looking, yes. Beastly hot under the late summer sun of Kyrnos? Oh gods _yes_! Hot, cloying and getting worse by the minute. I cursed under my breath in 3 languages as I imagined what the rest of the day would be like.

Ten minutes farther along, we found the messenger.

Rounding one of the many tight curves we came upon him suddenly, and stopped in our tracks. He had been stripped to the waist and his hands were tied behind his back. His legs were tied to his saddle, bent back so that he could not urge his horse to move more quickly than the sedate pace at which it was plodding towards us. He appeared unhurt but terrified, a leather cord held a tube made of bone in place between his teeth, gagging the poor man.

He was nodding his head at us and shouting at us around his gag as we dashed in to cut his bonds. The tube was a scroll-case, the same one that held my message… and I found it still inside. But I also found that someone had taken it and scrawled a message of their own over what my scribes had penned so carefully;

“ _I have changed my mind. Catch me if you can_!”


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

 

 

 

“Princess?”

Phedre had to take my hands in her own to get my attention and to make me release the parchment. I was livid, enraged, and a little bit frightened when she glanced at the page and immediately nodded. It was the very same hand that has written the message of bloody triumph from Carthage. How could this _be_?

Imriel and a guard had freed the last of the messenger’s bonds and helped him down from his bemused horse; “Yes, a woman, small, cloaked and hooded. She took me by surprise…. you must go, hurry! Three men rode up as soon as she sent me on my way. I heard bowshots, screams, I could see nothing, yet it was just a moment ago!”

Joscelin had mounted up and was staring intently at the road ahead, Rocco at his side. A lifetime of discipline held him in check long enough to allow the rest of us to mount up, and he held out an arm to ensure Roccu waited as well.

Once ready, we surged forward at a gallop, a refreshing breeze cooling me and focusing my thoughts, at the expense of my mount’s efforts. I saw Imriel grimace, and shot him a questioning look. “Too loud!” was his answer, and indeed, 21 galloping horses on a sun-baked roadway made for a frightful racket at this speed.

Not half a mile onward, we found one horse and 3 men laying on or near the road. On close inspection, we found one of the men still alive, all the rest were but corpses, all the men and the horse were studded with arrows. By luck, it was I who found the man who was still alive. I dismounted by leaping from my horse while she was still slowing to a walk and ran to his side. He had an arrow clean through his right arm, how own bow and one arrow lay at his side, the angle at which he had been hit suggested that he had been struck in the act of drawing back for a shot of his own.

“Thank Mithras you came, you scared her off before she could finish me…. You …. _Princess_?” He seemed amazed to recognize me, tending to him. He must have seen our entry into Ajaccio.

“ _Crateros_.” I spoke the password, the _signale’_ we had arranged for communication with the Lord’s chosen men. He nodded. “What happened here and what did She look like?” I demanded, while binding his arm between the arrow wound and his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, but it looked so easy. We took her horse down straight away, rode up calling for her to give it up… but she used her horse for cover and she has a bow, too. Fired laying down, from behind the horse. How? Who can shoot like that?” He glanced at his companions in the hot sun, sprawled out with a final agony writ large in the angle of their limbs. “My poor lads, the bounty made them-“ He stopped himself, too late, and I withdrew from him with some haste.

The Lord’s chosen men were Bounty Hunters in reality, helping themselves by pretending to be helping us. I hope the disgust I felt showed.

Roccu was dashing about like an excited dog, gathering up fallen arrows and smiling at the ground. “Ah, such a contest this was! See here;” He pointed at what looked like nothing but raw dirt to my eyes. “She rolled out from behind her horse, here, fired here, rolled back and then fired again, from here!” He looked up. “Three shots at three men, they sending arrows at her own self all the while.” He whistled softly. I glanced back at the survivor, who was being tended by Imriel and Phedre. 100 paces might have been an exaggeration, but not much of one. “Ah, and she collected all 3 horses, is gone just long enough for the dust to settle.”

“Then why are you _smiling_? That means she can ride one horse until its blown and then switch to another! How can we catch her now?!” I didn’t realize that I was so angry I was shaking until Joscelin stepped up behind me and put a firm hand on my shoulder.

“Highness, if you please? I think he may be wanting to tell us how.”

  
Roccu was not smiling anymore, but he was nodding. “Yes, if it pleases the Princess? Yes, this person is a stranger and indeed alone. So, she knows one road and trusts the widest to be the easiest… and is true. But is not always the quickest.”

“You know a shortcut?”

“Of a certainty, and more than just one.”

 

 

 

***

 

The ride we made that afternoon was enough to make the word 'exhilarating' one I hope never to repeat again. Midday meal forgotten, we pushed hard to catch our strange enemy. Imriel passed on a better description of her to the rest of us as we rode, gained from the wounded Bounty Hunter while Phedre had carefully removed the arrow and bound his arm up. We spared no-one from out party to escort him back to the village, and neither did the men from Ajaccio.

“Fair hair, and dark skin, black eyes, she should be easy to pick from almost any crowd. When she was questioning him Phedre stood up and held her hand up to her ear for him to verify, and the man said she was only that tall. Puts her at about 60 inches, if she was wearing riding boots. She had a curved sword as well. Elua’s mercy… if she is as good with that as she was with a bow, we may have a problem-“

“We have many swords in our company!” I snapped with unwarranted anger. “Of bows, we have aught but one.” That one was in a sheath, on Roccu’s horse.

Instead of reacting to my pique, Imriel nodded grimly, and gestured at the road ahead. “Its turning out to be a more treacherous country than we had thought.”

Yes, he had touched on it perfectly. My irritation was not directed at him of course, nor even caused by our enemy now. The men of Kyrnos had placed a bounty on this Phaing person, giving no interest to our need to speak to her, no heed to what was purported to have happened at Carthage. Oh no, local politics dictated that the rabble-rouser be silenced, and that was that.

“He also said that she looked similar to us.” I flashed him a look that showed him how hurtful it would be if this woman turned out to be D'Angeline. “No, not one of us, but _more_ so. Its hard to make sense of how it put it. Something supernatural, if you can believe that. More beautiful than any of us,” he barked out a short laugh, “were it not for ears the size of her hands.”

If that was intended to make a laugh, it had the opposite effect. Instead of taking anything they had told is seriously, I had to wonder how many Bounty Hunters went about their work in a drunken stupor.


	4. Chapter 4

By mid-afternoon, we had the satisfaction of finding one of her horses. Head down and exhausted, it stood stripped of its gear in a stream where we had to pause to water our mounts. The horse was not ruined, it would recover, but it was odd to me that Phaing would have taken the time to relive it of its harness and all the rest, which was strewn nearby, and I saw similar, questioning looks from the rest of the party.  
  
There was no time to discuss it. We rode on, taking a dangerous shortcut that did not even look like a path at all. We rode our mounts at a canter uphill, and walked them as quickly as we could downhill. I had blisters on my feet and my thighs blazed by the hour of sunset, by then we could see dust ahead, and pushed our mounts for what we hoped would be the final push. Roccu was frustrated that we had not caught up to Phaing yet, but did manage to warn us of a Z-shaped switchback up ahead, and strung his bow. Were Phaing to decide to ambush us, that would be the perfect place for it.  
  
The road was wide here, to make it possible for wagons to pass each other. We now rode 3 abreast, Joscelin, Imriel, myself and Phedre in that order in a line, flanked by my guards. Roccu rode between us and the men of Ajaccio, to cover us with his bow. The sun was sinking, too quickly! Purple twilight was upon us, yet we could smell Her dust now, we were that close. Storm clouds were moving in from the north, already covering the sky overhead. There would be no Moon or Stars to aid us tonight, we would have to light torches, and press on much more slowly if this went on any longer.  
  
We had not reached the first switchback when the sound of falling timbers assailed our ears. This was one of the few places on Kyrnos where there were tall trees, rather than bushes nearly the size of trees. Every horse in the column came to a stop, ears pricked up and heads tossing. First one crash, then the other, just far enough ahead of us that we could not see it, only a few waving tops of trees still standing. Imriel turned to look at me, not ready to believe we had lost our quarry just as we were so close.

  
“Abatis?!” Roccu was angry enough to the both us. He explained the word he used before we could ask. “These Vallans, they prepare trees to fall across each other, to block the road. In times of trouble, and this is that time… but how she knocked them down, herself?”  
  
“She has 2 horses, and if there was rope…” Phedre turned her horse sideways to the road, to speak to him. “… Valla? _Porto_ Valla?”  
  
“Yes Countess, we are close now, 3/4ths the way-“  
  
“We have passed beyond your Lord's territory, and you didn’t think to mention that before?” Imriel’s voice rang with a mirror of the anger I had felt so strongly most of the day. “ _Wonderful_ , and now what would you suggest?” He turned away from Roccu as he asked, head falling back in exhaustion and frustration as he did… and thus he was the first to see her. One by one, the rest of us followed his gaze, while Roccu blithely continued to speak.  
  
“See this road, straight ahead. But, not so short a cut, I fear to say.” Roccu stopped speaking as he noticed that, one by one, D’Angelines had followed Imriel’s gaze upwards. 100 feet above us and less than half that horizontally from where we were, there was a figure silhouetted against the purple clouds. She sat on a tired horse, looking back down on us, unmoving for just a moment. I think Phaing must have been smiling at us as she took off her floppy hat and waved it at us. Waved happily, from the roadbed we had been hoping to follow her along.  
  
I head Roccu’s bow creak as he drew back, and Phedre’s voice; “ _Don’t you dare!”_  
  
I did not look at them, my eyes stayed fixed on Phaing, and I saw her whole posture change, suddenly alert as she twisted in her saddle, leaning towards us to look up and down the road we were on. She called something to us that was too faint to make out, and then louder, she cried out something that sounded like “ _Bevaatch_!” twice, pointing up and down the road. It made no sense to me, I could only stare up at her.

  
“Beware!” Phedre reacted first, understanding the Scaldic tongue as she did. “Ajaccio, ward your rear! Joscelin, what lies ahead?”  
  
Roccu had told us there was a road ahead, it was a smaller one, just wide enough for 2 horses to ride abreast. The men of Valla… or so I mistakenly thought them to be at the time… were coming at us out of the dim forest path at a walk. Quiet and so near, nearerer to us than Phaing was, and closing as we watched. Once they saw us react to them, they lowered spears at us and the lead man called out with a heavy Caerdicci accent;

  
“Da’Angelines! You are not welcome here, nor are your Gods!”  
  
A bolt of lightning promptly smote him from his saddle, as well as the man next to him.  
  
This is not the sort of thing that happens every day, and we were fortunate that Imriel was there, always the first to react in such a crisis. “It would seem that at least one of them disagrees with you.” He called out, and then leaned back and forth to give his orders to the Guardsmen. _Mine_ , people call them, but _ours_ in fact and in spirit. It was he who had insured that they were trained to fight from horse back, and now they would prove the worth of it.  
  
The Caerdicci’s companions were discomfited, to say the very least. However, those behind the leaders were made of stern, or greedy, stuff. They glanced up at the clouds, and one said “luck” in his commander’s tongue. Another said “They are still rich. Forget the Boss, here’s to a Prince’s ransom!” And the sound of combat behind us was all the encouragement they needed. On they came, spears held like lances, back-lit by the flames of a few small fires started by the lighting strike.  
  
“Roundelay left!”  
Imriel’s order set a planned defense into motion. Horsemen to the left of us turned back and kicked their mounts into a dead run. Joscelin lead the Guards on the right after them, and Imriel wheeled and filled the gap between the men from the right and the ones from the left. Phedre and I stayed in the center, protected, but not useless. It was our job to keep our eyes open and to warn the men fighting for our lives of anything unexpected. The men riding round us had just enough time to build up the speed they needed before the enemy struck them. The effect was that of a stick of wood meeting a whirling grindstone. The first two horsemen had their lances swept to one side, then their shields, and then their mounts were bullied to one side where they were tangled up with each other, and their riders were butchered. And so on with the next two pairs.  
  
I cannot say more about how it actually proceeded; thankfully my part in this required me to look elsewhere. The sounds that they were making, especially the horses, were terrible enough to remind me how very much I hated war. There was no telling how many were coming for us, I could not see far enough down that road to see an end to them, there must have been at least twice our number. I glanced from side to side at the terrain we were in. To the right, it sloped away. and in just a few yards the rocky ground fell like a cliff face so tall that the tops of the trees growing below were not visible. On the left was a little more gentle, sloping up into a rise that was triple its depth. Weeds and bushes were clinging to life there… and if all went wrong, perhaps a frightened Princess could hide there, for a time.  
  
For just a brief moment, I spared a glace behind me to see how those men fared. Roccu had forgotten all about Bounties, he later admitted that he was frightened for our safety until he saw how well we were doing on our own. When I looked, he had already decided to lend his support to his countrymen, riding back and above them and as far up the slope as he could to get clear shots for his bow. The men of Ajaccio only had time to wheel about and had no tactics such as ours, and so they simply charged right into the enemy with nothing but the slender advantage of higher ground giving weight to their charge. Three against three they fought, and seemed to be doing well... but well enough to win a battle of attrition such as we faced? I could not tell, but I was not encouraged when I saw the engagement briefly become a four vs. four contest. One of the enemy and one of the Men of Ajaccio attempted the flank on the shoulder of the road. I blinked, and where they had been a heartbeat before, there was nothing but the fading screams of their horses.  
  
“Pull back!” I turned back to see that our plan was still working, but only _just_. A pile of flesh had built up on the left side of the road, we had to back up for the Roundelay to continue to function. We were fortunate that the men behind us had attacked the enemy, giving us room to retreat. The men simply tightened their forward turn and went longer on the back end, whilst Phedre and I nudged out mounts backwards. She now watching behind, at the worsening situation there, and I with my palfrey still facing the direction we were going when this all started.  
  
I had forgotten to look upwards.  
  
Coming at us two at a time cost them six of their number, so with just a few brief shouts, the enemy changed tactics. One giant of a man met our roundelay head on, while 2 others charged _up_ the slope, using momentum to keep their horses hooves under them until they were past us, and between ourselves and Roccu and the rest of our allies. Things began to happen very quickly at that point; the armored giant and horse met our Roundelay and the shock of collision disrupted our Guard’s fine efforts. Our men, who had been doing so well with just swords against men with spear and shield, were thrown into confusion by one man with heavy armor and a large mace. As the Joscelin and the other men who had been ahead of the checked guard struggled to wheel about, Phedre and I nearly came face to face with a pair of lancers, we being exposed to them fully now.  
  
And then a horse fell on them, and they were carried away over the cliff.  
I’m afraid I simply can’t explain it any other way.  
  
It did not fall from the sky, but came crashing out of the undergrowth on the left side of the road, tumbling end over end, and by luck taking those enemy riders with it to the shoulder, and over into the darkness. Imriel appeared just ahead of me, the Bastard had jumped past us so that Imriel could protect us. He paused only a moment, and glanced up the steep slope, reminding me to do the same. Phaing was not visible there, I did not expect to see her as she should have ridden off to Porto Valla by now.  
But that _must_ have been her horse; where else could it have come from? Lighting could come from the heavens, not horses.

“THROW THEM!”  
  
Imriel had already lunged ahead to take on the next trio coming at us. I saw small objects sail over him, then bright flashes of light, and all was chaos. I do not remember being thrown from my horse. I don’t recall how I was able to scramble to the bushes unhurt past so many charging men and panicked horses. It was all a jumble, for me and others, thanks to something called Hellenic Fire. The flashes, the flames, the fear. I only knew that I was no longer on the road, but crouched low to the ground and trying to make myself as small as possible as I rubbed the glare out of my aching eyes.  
  
I later learned that Imriel had been helped by the flash and the flames, so far forward that he was back-lit by the flashes, he and the Bastard pounced on the blinking enemy riders and killed them. This was the turn of the tide, the moment when the enemy began to realize that the cost was never going to be worth the gain. The main body turned and fled, but for the rest of us the fighting was still going on.  
  
I saw a black shadow moving among the enemy. Where it passed, men fell, screaming and thrashing, or dropped like a sack of potatoes. I shook my head and peered out from behind an old tree stump, blinking and trying to see past a patch of flaming oil.  
  
_There_ , there was the brutal-looking enemy warrior with the armor, the one that had broken our formation. He had knocked down one of our Guards and dismounted, turned to face in my direction with his back to the cliff. His eyes swept past his prone and unmoving victim and found Joscelin, who was working hard to put down a man who used paired short-swords cleverly enough to slow him down a little. The huge warrior raised his free hand, with a hatchet in it poised for a throw.  
  
And then the hand and the hatchet were simply gone.  
  
The black shadow I had just glimpsed out of the corner of my eye now stood between me and the stunned warrior. While I fumbled to take up my Dagger, the man’s hand that held the mace was severed at exactly the place where there was a gap between the gauntlet and the rest of his armor. Then the shadow spun about, crouched low on one heel and she shouted out an inarticulate cry, a curved sword slicing through both legs at the ankles. A small boot lashed up and out with one quick kick with just enough force to make certain that the screaming warrior tumbled away into the darkness.  
  
The shadow stood and took 2 quick steps towards the flames, and resolved itself into the person that could only have been Phaing.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

 

 

In the firelight, colors were hard to define. Her skin was indeed dark, her eyes as well. Her hair had to be blond, and whatever method she has used to hold it back had started to give way, making it look like a Cobra’s hood behind her head. Her ears, while large, were not a humanizing flaw, but simply different in a way that I did not appreciate at the time. Her face was striking, not d'Angeline but surely it was very beautiful… when it was not twisted in that nightmarish grimace I saw then. Battle lust, I now know they call it. Here was someone that was not devastated by the carnage of battle. _Gods have mercy_ , I thought, _she is_ **thrilled** _by this!_

She wore attire that might seem scandalous, but after a day of riding in the heat of summer, I envied her choices. Hard-looking boots reaching halfway up her calves, with knife sheathes sewn into them. A skirt that didn’t come halfway to her knees, held in place by a broad belt festooned with pouches and weapons. Her midriff was bare, upper torso covered by some sort of half-vest. Her shoulders and upper arms were bare, free to move as desired, and her fore-arms were covered by some sort of leather vambraces, not metal ones. And in her right hand was a curved sword, not a saber or a scimitar, but something between. It did not shine in the firelight, there was too much blood running down it.

So much blood…

“ _Jossselin Verreuil_.” Her voice was as ghastly as the rest of her was beautiful. In that moment, she sounded like a large Cat that some Nobleman had taught to mimic speech. And, not terribly _well_ , I might add.

Joscelin had stepped up quickly after putting down the man he’d been fighting. He stood between her and the way out, up to the road above where her last horse must have been waiting for her. “We would have words wi-“

He only just began to speak to Phaing when I saw her crazed face change a bit. She was smiling now, a true smile as if she was happy, delighted even, to be facing the finest swordsman in Europe. The only warning he or I had before she lunged at him, was how her eyes seemed to click without blinking. I had seen that sort of thing before, when Alais’s Dog saw a Partridge take to wing from under his feet. Just an instant’s light-hearted consideration, and then the lunge that allowed it to crunch the bird between its’ teeth.  
The look from Phaing was just the same, just as feral.

Their blades rang off each other so rapidly that I could not follow the movements, even if I had known what to call them. She tried to dart around him while they traded blows. Joscelin barely managed to block her, and fell back a bit. In a way, his two-handed grip served him well enough; her furious slashes were all turned aside with his usual, economical moves. However, he in turn could not seem to get past her guard. Her one-handed grip kept her curved blade slipping around his like quicksilver. Worse, her free hand kept shifting around, from daggers to pouches to pockets, as if she was considering what to throw at him, and constantly changing her mind. I can’t speak for Joscelin, but _I_ certainly found it distracting.

Five times in less than half a minute, they engaged, backed off from each other, and re-engaged in another complex pattern of strike and counter-strikes. That smile grew brighter as it went on. And then suddenly, it was over.

“Jos- _oof_!” That was Phedre's voice, followed by the sound of yet another horse loosing it’s footing and falling to the roadway, back where the men from Ajaccio had been fighting.

Phaing hesitated for just half a heartbeat, and then did something I could not fathom; she took a step back, heels clicking together as she stood ramrod straight, and raised the hilt of her sword to her chin. With one quick nod down the roadway, she excused Joscelin from their duel. Her smile turned to a grimace of frustration, very reluctant to let it end, but still doing so. For his part, Joscelin did not hesitate at all, he was off at a dead run in the blink of an eye. She lowered her sword and started moving to the bushes again and her escape, and ran right into Irmiel.

Imriel had seen off the last of our attackers and doubled back to find me. Instinctively, he knew where I was, and saw Phaing moving towards the place where I was trying to hide. He launched himself from the saddle, wrapping his arms around Phaing and tumbling down the hard-packed dirt roadway. I winced, and then I think I cheered when I saw him come up on his feet, with his arms pinning Phaing’s to her sides, scimitar useless and laid along her thigh. He still had his own sword in hand… and I wondered at his instinctive mercy. He might have been able to hurt her badly, perhaps even cripple her right then and there, but instead… he simply held her immobile.

… it made me think of how he argued with my Father against the elimination of the Maghiun Dohn in the aftermath of that horrific attack, while he was still healing from Berlick’s claws. I cannot imagine what good could ever come from his doing so, but I still love him all the more for it.

I was emerging from my cover when Phaing screamed in his face “ _I have to get to Cytheria_!”

The very words he had screamed at Joscelin and Phedre when he lay in a deranged fever, and had said so many other hurtful, evil things in his delirium. And if that wasn’t enough of a shock to him, she stamped her heel down on his instep.

Phaing slipped free of Imriel and brought her blade up. Imriel was fast, oh he was so fast! Faster than Phaing, he sent her reeling back on her heels with his slashes. But he could not follow up, his foot was hurting badly and her steps were as fleet as ever. I was seeing them from the side, her left flank to me, and I changed the grip I had on my dagger.

“Vereuille’s pup… _yes_ , Prince Skinny, I presume?” Her voice was different now, a thrumming drawl that sounded more Chowatti than Skaldic, and a little tired.

“Look who’s talking. You’d probably have do dance around in the rain just to get wet.” He was tired too, and trying to buy time with banter. The sounds of combat were dying away, soon our guards would return to help box her in, if we had any left.

She knew that too, and shook her head. “Much as I’d love to, no time-“ And she interrupted her own sentence with a sudden flurry of blows that slowly forced Imriel aside. Her left now fully exposed to me, I threw my dagger.

I have no skill with weapons; I had taken to this training in the aftermath of what had happened with the Carthaginians. Never wanting to feel so helpless again, I had tried my best, and found I had no real talent for blade-work. One thing that I had learned was that throwing a dagger and hitting a target was very, very difficult. The spin has to be judged perfectly, else you will hit your target with the flat of the blade or the handle. That, in fact, is mathematically the most likely result of any throw. Only an expert with a perfect judge of distance can do real damage. Not being an expert, I tried something else. I gave it extra spin, throwing fast and hard. I had noticed that this caused a dagger to make a burring sound that was very noticeable. In this case, I was hoping to distract that demonic woman and give Imriel a better chance to survive.

Phaing barely glanced at me, barely seemed aware of my presence. As if on instinct, her left hand drew something that looked like a steel comb, and shifting her body to present a smaller target edge-wise, she held the device up to block my throw.

The tip of my dagger embedded itself in her forearm.

Her arm had been held out about 18 inches from her body. If she had paid my Dagger no mind, it would have bounced off her harmlessly as the spinning dagger traded its sharp end for its handle in those 18 inches.  
Phaing reacted by dropping her comb-like weapon, and shaking my dagger loose from her arm without making a sound. It had not gone deep as I had hoped, and she had not lost focus on trading blows with Imriel. However, he did see the hit, and his grim smile answered her grimace of pain.

“Enough, wouldn’t you say?” Imriel shouted at her, demanding her surrender.

  
She answered him by reaching into a pocket with her _injured_ arm, and hurling something that looked like an egg. I was having trouble freeing my 2nd dagger, and was not looking directly at the bright flash of light, but I did see my own shadow on the tree stump. When I looked up, I saw Imriel staggering back, eyes shut tight and his blade flashing in a defensive pattern to ward off a foe, one that had already left him… and was now coming at me!

No, not _at_ me, but close enough that I fell back, into the bushes, and my jaw clamped down so hard on my teeth that they hurt for hours afterwards. Ah, but I need not have worried. Once again, she barely spared me a glance as she swept past. What might she have seen? A terrified young woman, crouched in the foliage, a stiletto clasped in both hands, blade up but far too close to me to be useful at all. Hardly anything for a killer like her to worry about.

It was with intense gratitude that I saw her fade from view, scrambling up the steep slopes.  
An even more intense hatred boiled up in me a moment later, once she was gone from sight and hearing. She had _ignored_ me...

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

I went straight to Imriel, calling out his name, and then my own to make sure he knew who was about to touch him as he tried to blink the dazzle out of his eyes. I led him to where I had seen Joscelin go after Phedre’s frightening shout. As we now discovered, she had been trying to say; “Joscelin, just block her!” as the men of Ajaccio had won out, and secured our rear. A riderless horse had crashed into her own mount at an inopportune moment.

Roccu had organized those men to our rear in a way that saved them at the last moment. When there were just 6 left, he’d had them fall back and form a V-shaped line, open like a funnel at the end. Our greedy enemy had attempted to ride through, emerging one at a time for Roccu to dispatch with his bow.

It had been _us_ they were after. Myself, and my loved ones.

“Caerdicci Mercenaries!” Imriel spat, telling me at last who had attacked us, and why. Roccu was the only one that asked how he knew, the rest of us remembered hearing of his time in the siege of Lucca, and the violent intimacy with which he had come to know such men.

It was Roccu’s turn to spit. “Banker’s Guilds! The only people to employ such men on our island. Ah….also, the ones least interested in becoming people under the Flag of your own. No, not Vallans after all.” Kidnap, negotiations, and a shameful withdrawal, such was the fate that we had just avoided. A rider must have left Ajaccio before we did, and gone straight to wherever these Mercenaries had come from, I could think of nothing else. Had they arrived before Phaing had brought down the tree, they could have taken the high ground, and their numbers would surely have prevailed. By design or accident, our quarry had nearly lead us to disaster.

Roccu took off running up the steep slope, bow in hand, and I followed. I waved off Imriel’s protest. “I’m the least exhausted one here!” That was true, yet I could barely keep up with Roccu. Tough and sure-footed, his enthusiasm came from a lifetime of pursuits like this…. or perhaps, thoughts of a Bounty. As for myself, if he was able to get a shot off, I wanted to be there to see it.

It was not to be. We were but a third the way up and just reaching the steepest part of the slope, when we heard the fading clatter of hooves from above. Phaing had quickly found her 3rd horse and was already off. Roccu’s shoulders slumped and he turned toward me, mouth opening to chastise me for following him, if the look on his face was any clue. Once again, it was not to be; the rock he was standing on suddenly gave way, dropping him back down the slope. My arms shot out to grab him, and I wound up with nothing but his hat in my clutching hands, he was gone so suddenly. He did not cry out, and I scrambled back down to find him halfway back to the road, clutching the seat of his pants and in some pain. He rose with my help and accepted his hat with the words; “If it pleases the Dauphine, I beg thee; we say nothing of this, yes?”

 

We returned to find the rest already taking stock of our situation. Imriel greeted me with a hug strong enough to lift me off my feet, one I returned as fully as I could. The smile on his face was hard to fathom until he held up my dagger for all to see. “Well done! Of the 3 of us, you were the only one to draw blood fighting that wild-woman.” And it was true, the tip of the dagger had road-dirt clinging to the blood on it. This did wonders for my self-esteem, however odd as that sounds.

“Only one of the _four_ , you mean, unless she cut one of you?” Phedre was testing her leg. She had jumped clear of her horse, but her fall had not been a gentle one. Joscelin was at her side, of course.

“I fear we are not done riding.”

She nodded. “I’ll be fine, for as long as I must be. Porto Valla is 10 miles from here, they tell me. Can we make it by dawn?”

“That depends on our horses, love. But there are many new re-mounts available for us, thanks to the Mercenaries.” Joscelin looked over his shoulder to make sure Roccu was busy speaking with his countrymen, not listening to us. “And no, I don’t have to check myself for nicks to know that Phaing did not so much as scratch me. She was fighting my _blade_ , not me. And she was doing it for the enjoyment of it.”

“But, I saw…” I wasn’t sure how to describe the interplay of their brief duel, however; “…I saw her face, she looked so determined.”

“To show her skills, perhaps. Which I must admit, are considerable. She could have slipped her blade past my guard once, twice perhaps.” He shook his head ruefully. “Honestly, I have no idea what to make of what just happened.”

“I nearly had her! Don’t tell us …” Imriel left unsaid what Joscelin had been implying; the possibility that he could have been bested by this Phaing.

The Queen’s champion shook his head at his foster son and passed Phedre to me, whom I held tightly to my side as she tested her leg. “She knew my name. I tried and could not disarm her. And when Phedre called out to me, she backed off to let me go to her.” Phedre stiffened in my arms and looked up at Joscelin, and then me with inquisitive eyes. I had to nod, and Imriel also confirmed it.

“But, I _did_ have her, for a moment.” Imriel shook his foot out. “The Bitch fights dirty.”

Phedre winced. “Yes, I heard.” She tried to keep the anger out of her voice, but I swear I could feel it through her skin. I glanced up at Imriel, who had turned away, as did Joscelin, and my hatred of Phaing returned, and doubled. “She knows a great deal about us, and we know nothing about her at all. If we continue this, as she perhaps wants us to, this is going to be very dangerous for us.”

Our men picked up things from the dirt while our Guards gathered horses and got them under control. Joscelin had gone to the macabre site of Phaing’s killing of that last man, the one with the heavy armor. The body had slipped away over the slope of the cliff, but his hands and feet remained. The man I had come to regard as my Father-in-Law picked up the gauntlets and shook the hands out of them before returning to show them to Imriel. Watching him handle those grisly trophies made me a little light-headed. He asked me what position the man had assumed when he was cut. He had to ask twice before i was able to answer him.

“The left was cocked overhead for a throw, the right was holding a mace in a low guard position when she took that one a second later.”

He merely nodded and showed the cuffs of the gauntlets to Imriel. “The left one would have had a gap of about two inches at the very most between it and his Vambrace. The right one, hardly any gap at all. Look close, can your eyes see any scratches, on either one?”

Imriel took a close look, and then hissed, shaking his head. “That kind of precision, from some slip of a girl that looks like a teenager? This makes no sense-“

“None of this makes ANY sense!” My eyes returned to Phedre, and she looked more confused and angry than I had ever seen her. Furious, in fact, something that made me forget my own anger for a moment. “What are we being led into, or away from? What…. _Imri_!”

“Yes?”

“You got the best look at her, what can you tell me?”

“Only for a heartbeat. Just…. Well, her eyes are not black, but a very dark blue. She is so slight; I think I could surround her waist completely with just my open hands. And her ears come to points…for an instant, I thought they might really be horns.”

"Demon-woman, indeed. What else?” Phedre asked carefully. “Were you repulsed? Did you see anything _in_ her eyes?”

“What? No, there was no time to look into her and… she didn’t feel repulsive, just, ferociously _alive_.” He shot an entirely unnecessary look of apology to me.

“What’s that in your hand?” Joscelin asked him, casting those gauntlets away. I saw what Imriel had found, and answered for him;

“That’s what Phaing held up to block my dagger when she heard it coming at her. Hmm, comforting to know she can be taken by surprise, and is capable of mortal failings, isn’t it?”

“So it would seem.” Joscelin accepted the odd, comb-shaped weapon, and took half a dozen steps away, turning it over in his hands, and then bent to recover a fallen Caerdicci longsword from the road. He came back and gave it to Imriel. “Swing it at me. Hold it firmly in both hands, firm!”

Joscelin stepped back from him and nodded, holding just the steel Comb. Imriel took his swing, which Jocelyn seemed to try to parry with the comb. There came a sharp twang, and Imriel was left holding half a longsword. “A sword-breaker.” Joscelin named it. “Not a new idea, but the steel needed to make such a thing would have to be...“ He held it to his ear and gave it a sharp rap with his thumbnail. “Steel that rings like a silver bell. You know, I’m suddenly very interested in speaking to this Phaing. _Very_ interested.”

He handed the sword-breaker to me! Without a word of caution or imploring me not to mislay it, for it was mine by right. Right of conquest, of all things. He took Phedre in his arms and carried her to her horse.

I held the wicked thing in both hands, palms up, and looked up to see Imriel favoring me with his warm smile. He was glad I wasn’t trying to make small of my success, or tell them I had only been lucky. All of them had been lucky at times, otherwise they would not be standing there.

The humility of Terre de-Ange’s greatest heroes became more understandable to me that night.


	7. Chapter 7

 Our material situation was not much changed from what it had been ten minutes earlier. We had lost no gear, and our horses were tired yet uninjured. Of our 6 guards, 2 were wounded, the worst had lost a strip of skin from his scalp and also had a fractured wrist. A comrade had already put a poultice to his head. All were as bruised and scraped as Imriel, but that was all. The finest armor the Kingdom could produce had proven a wise investment that night.  
  
The men from Ajaccio did not fare so well. All were wounded, 3 were dead and one was missing entirely. I had to tell them what had happened, none of his comrades had actually seen he slip over the cliff entangled with the mercenary. The survivors were sullen, and turned away from Phe’dre’s offer to aid them. It was clear that they’d had enough of this ride, and were not going to continue.  
  
“And you?” Roccu asked.  
  
“Our ship will be at Porto Valla. We must go, but what sort of reception awaits us, after…. this?”  
  
Roccu shrugged, and then smiled “Ah, but now I _must_ go with you, only the least of roads is open to us, and how will you find the right one without me?”  
  
So onward we rode, carefully, our poor horses following traces as we sat astride captured Mercenary mounts. It was not so hard to find the way and avoid branches that threatened to claw at our faces after the Guards had lit their torches. The cool of the night was a refreshing change from the heat of the day. I was feeling better once we put that place of death behind us, but I had forgotten about those low, leaden clouds.  
  
Half an hour later, it began to rain.

 

 

 

***

  
  
I was glad of my common, sweat-encrusted Wool long ‘ere we came to Porto Valla that morning. It kept me warm enough to avoid becoming ill on that endless, miserable night. Dawn was an hour past by the time we rounded a hill and saw our destination below us. It was a pretty little place, sprawled around a cramped natural harbor, the outskirts unconstrained by a town wall.  
  
We were far too tired to enjoy the sight, and our horses were so much worse off than we were. Even after using the Caerdicci mounts up and abandoning them, we had pushed our own too hard for too long, even the Bastard looked ready to give up. They did perk up enough to carry us the last mile when they sensed the town ahead, and an end to the journey. Our steadfast guards were splashed with mud and were weaving in their saddles. The rest of us were in worse shape, we must have looked like their captives, judging from looks we received from those we passed on the road. There was no gate, thus no explaining of ourselves as we entered this sunlit, friendly little town.  
  
In the center of town was a fortress large enough to shelter most of the population. The roofs of the surrounding buildings were overlaid with orange or black tiles. Even the least of the structures were covered with gleaming white stucco. Walls were adorned with paintings, actual works of art that ranged from geometric patters that framed the walls to ocean scenes or detailed Family portraits. The people shown, and those walking about, were such a varied lot that no quick description would do them justice.  
“So close to our Kingdom, yet so exotic.”  
  
Joscelin was like a Hawk, sitting unmoving but watchful on his mount. Poor Phedre and I could barely keep our eyes open. Only Imriel was restless, eyes scanning and body shifting as he searched the knots of people here and there for a small, possibly cloaked woman.  
  
Roccu had left us, I had no idea when or where, he simply wasn’t there when I looked around for him. This was a problem, since we were trying to navigate our way down to the Harbor, and the twisting streets turned us back uphill. If Roccu had stayed with us we’d be at the docks by now! My sleep-deprived mind fixated on this, and I was looking for him instead of Phaing, which may seem senseless given the situation. In the last 24 hours we had come to rely on him, and it would be a shame if he had simply slipped away. I was relieved when I spotted him 10 minutes later, down a block of stone shops that looked as if they dated back to the days of the Tiberian Empire. He was standing in the doorway of a Hostelry having an animated conversation with a woman that wore a cloak that did little to hide her buxom figure or the hem of a fine gown. I thought he must have an incredible stamina, to be seeking female companionship after what we had been through. Unthinkingly, I turned my mount that way. Imriel said something, and then came along beside me asking what I was doing. I only nodded at Roccu, and Imriel followed my gaze. He spat out a curse that jolted me wide awake and kicked The Bastard into a quick trot, right up behind the woman. She spun on one heel and confronted the Bastard’s wet nostrils. I locked gazes with Roccu, warning him with my eyes as our guards clattered up behind us. Imriel stood in his stirrups to peer over his horse’s head at the woman.  
  
“Claudia.”  
  
The name was faintly familiar to me, and I dared a glance at Imriel. Without looking at me, he far a finger over the upper edge of his ear, and then tugged if forward.  
  
I swallowed hard. He had just signaled me that we were in the presence of the Unseen Guild. The secret organization of spies had tried to recruit him when Imriel was 18 years old, attending University in Tiberium. It was Claudia herself who had tried, and failed, to include him in the ranks ... and then warned him that if he spoke of the Unseen Guild to anyone at all, his life and their own would be forfeit. He had ignored that warning where I, my mother and his foster parents were concerned. We had been grateful for that sharing of knowledge, and never dreamed that we would be unable to keep that secret to ourselves.  
  
The woman he had called Claudia took a step to the side, around the Bastard’s head, to get a better look at Imriel. She was shocked, he looked as dreadful as I felt. “Gods…. _Imriel_? What’s _happened_ to you?”  
  
Instead of answering her, he leaned forward, and is voice was so rough it rasped. “I see you have already been briefed. Where is she?”  
  
His posture and tone offered no compromise, I myself would not have hesitated to obey him, and neither did Claudia, proving that she knew exactly what he was talking about. “I can show you. The corner, this way.” She spared me just a glance, and kept her face immobile, but I knew she recognized me as the Dauphine. She turned towards the corner at the far end of the block. There were no buildings on the down-slope side of the street, offering a view of whatever part of Porto Valla lay beyond. She walked flanked by Imriel and one of our Guards.  
  
“You as well, honored Guide.” I ground out those words at Roccu through my teeth. And similarly escorted, he followed in Claudia’s wake.  
  
I turned to warn Joscelin and Phedre with a look. They held back with the injured Guards.  
  
My heart sank, leaving me as exhausted as before, when I saw that the view included the harbor. Sure enough, Claudia pointed at the ship leaving the anchorage and heading for the open sea. “The little 3-masted  beast with the blue sails. But… isn’t that other one _your_ ship?”  
  
She pointed beyond, and to my delight, there Twilight Rhapsody was, coming in just as Phaing’s low, sleek little ship was exiting. “ _Ram it_!” I called aloud, making Imriel hunch his shoulders. Claudia turned a little away, with her hand over her mouth. I sighed, knowing that even if she was on deck in plain sight, our people had no description of Phaing and no reason to think anything special about that ship. I would have screamed if I had thought my voice could carry far enough.  
  
And then, the result I desired nearly came about if it’s own. The exit had been too hasty, and the smaller ship wandered across the path of the Royal Flagship.  
  
It’s not such an uncommon thing. In the mouth of a small harbor with only the fitful wind to propel them, ships can run afoul of each other with depressing regularity. When one crew is in a hurry, the chances increase, in this case the small ship with blue sails was in a hurry to leave, and ours was in a hurry to reach us. I had the impression that I was watching ants scurry about, the crews of both vessels scrambling to avoid what I so earnestly wanted. They succeeded, by the slimmest of margins. The distance to the event was great enough that I could see sun-spangled water between them again before the sound of wooden hulls scuffing each other reached me. I could well imagine the raised fists, the shouting and the cursing we could not hear. I could also imagine Phaing herself, smiling back at us, and waving as she made her escape.  
  
  
Imriel rounded on Claudia while I watched with helpless fury as those triangular sails filled with wind, our own ship throwing lines to longboats filled with strong men ready to row it to dock for a few thrown coins. No matter how quickly we tried to navigate these little streets, they would be tied to a pier before we could reach them.  
  
“If you know of Phaing, how did she get past your people?”  
  
“Wearing the hat and coat of a syndicated messenger.” Claudia shrugged. “I don’t have a small army at my beck and call, Prince. Once she made it to her ship, the matter was out of my hands. And why I should be offering anything to _you_ ,” for the first time, she included me in what she was saying, “is beyond me!” There seemed to be a touch of longing there, jealously perhaps. I should have been thinking of how that could be useful to us. Instead, it only made her seem pathetic to me.  
  
“You _know_ why you have to help us. You don’t want your people to be associated with the Guild that tried to kill us last night, do you?” Imriel could be rather menacing when he wanted to be.  
  
Claudia shot me an alarmed look, and then looked beyond to Imriel and Phedre. I looked as well, and I felt a pang of shame. People over 20 years our seniors, slumped with exhaustion after a brutal ride, waiting patiently for us to conclude our business and no doubt curious as to what we were up to. And here was Claudia, searching our faces for clues, mayhap wondering how many of us Imriel had told about her secret, deadly little network.  
Gods, had she seen it on my face already? I turned my mount and was about to go to my in-laws when I spied one last look at that fleeing ship. It had turned right and was already headed away on a definite course. “South?”  
  
“Southeast.” Claudia corrected me. ”Towards Messina, that could be useful.”  
  
“Cytheria is-“ I stupidly let that out, my exhaustion and desire to be helpful outstripping my sense. Shoulders hunched, I left Imriel to allow him to converse with Claudia, hoping that the pretense of confidentiality could be maintained. The repercussions of Imriel’s honestly regarding the Unseen Guild were too grim to think about at that moment. But it would not be long before I found out exactly how grim that Guild could be when it came to that sort of thing.  
  
All the Guards came with me but one, who withdrew to a discreet distance the other way down the street, to where he could block Claudia’s escape if she decided to run. Joscelin and Phedre were leaning against each other, as were their horses. In this instance, I was able to keep my head about me. “Make a mask of your faces,” I bid them in a low voice, “That is Claudia of Tiberium.”  
  
My warning helped Phedre, I doubt Joscelin would have let his stony face change at all. He was staring at Roccu, who had come along behind me without my knowing it. I gave the Tracker a look that I hope conveyed my irritation, and how finished I was with all things of Ajaccio.  
  
“You have our thanks for getting us here. You may go, _now_.” He may have been hurt, he may have deserved better, but his clumsy attempt to overhear us cost me what was left of my manners. I watched him turn and go, just to make sure that he really did leave this time, and he vanished into the Hostelry that I had seen him at earlier. To a bed, something I yearned for, but not nearly as much as I yearned to have my hands around Phaing’s throat. I told Joscelin and Phedre what I had seen, another narrow escape that would have had me rooting for the wrong person if this had been a tale told by firelight. Its not good to be so mad for so long, I knew that, even at that moment, but at least the anger was there to keep me from swaying in my saddle, and kept me alert when even our Guardsmen were starting to wilt. Minutes dragged by until Imriel returned to us, without Claudia.  
  
“Follow me, please, I saw a street that will take us to our ship.”

  
Our plain clothes and bedraggled appearance served us well. No officials intercepted us and no curious crowd slowed our progress to the wharf. Hours may have passed before the people of that city knew we had ever been there, and with nothing to show for it but a look at our ship's wake.  
Let the people of Kyrnos wonder what _that_ said of our support for one faction or another.

 

 

 

***

  
  
Ti-Phillippe was just reaching the landward end of the long pier when we arrived. He smiled to see us, and then grimaced to see our condition and the expressions on our faces.  
  
Phedre tossed him a small coin purse. “Make things right with the Harbor Master, we are leaving at once.” He turned away to do so without comment or hesitation. To the rest of us, she said; “Please, let’s get inside before we talk about anything, and then we can sleep on the problem as the crews take care of getting us on our way.”  
  
Our horses were done in, and did not protest at all as they were loaded into their cramped pens in the hold. We ourselves were just as badly in need of rest, but there would be none for us until we could talk this out, and lay at least a few unanswered questions to rest first. We excluded Tir-Phillippe and Captain Etrigan, not out of desire for secrecy, but because anything but the full story could only confuse them. All we could give them was instructions to chase the same ship they had nearly collided with, and failing that, Imriel gave them a destination; “Messina.”


	8. Chapter 8

We gathered to meet in a small wardroom where we could be sure of privacy, scratching out messages to send back to Terre D'Ange.

  
“According to Claudia, there are survivors of Carthage in Messina.” Imriel was still the fittest of the 4 of us. That was a good thing, as he had the most to say.  
  
“Survivors! It really happened, then?” Phedre sounded miserable, and she sounded old to my ears, for the first time. That was disturbing enough, but Joscelin looked worse. I had never seen him caked with trail-dust, the lines in his face were so much clearer now, another reminder of the toll their adventures had taken on them, and now resumed taking. And, of the four of us, he appeared to be the least surprised by the news that Carthage was indeed, no more. Moreover, he was the least bothered by it.  
  
Phedre noticed this as soon as I did, and then Imriel looked at him with hooded eyes.  
  
“Yes, dreadful news, but don’t ask me to shed a tear for them.” Joscelin intoned. “I nearly killed you because of what they did, nearly _killed you_. I’m also too tired to go over any personal feelings, what else did Claudia Fulvia have to tell you?”  
  
Imriel cleared his throat and took a gulp of the tea that had sent for us. It was mixed with a good deal of cream, just the thing to keep our eyes open for a time, and then drop us into a deep sleep.  
  
“Claudia seemed, shaken. I loosened her tongue with the unvarnished truth about what we were doing here, and what had just transpired. Paid her in the same coin I wanted in return; information. She responded truthfully, as far as I could tell.” Imriel rubbed his eyes, elbows propped on the table. I rose and came around behind him to rub his shoulders as he spoke. “The Unseen Guild is upset about this Phaing, she raised a small army and was well on her way to Carthage before any of them were aware of what was going on. They lost several agents there, ones that were busy with important work. They were looking into the ramifications of Carthage’s alliance with Ephesus and possibly another great power intending us harm in concert with them… Sidone’, not quite so hard, if you please.”  
  
My hands had tightened into something that must have felt like the talons on his shoulders. I made myself relax with some difficulty, and forgot my anger at Phaing as a new outrage took hold in the pit of my stomach. “Fascinating news,” I grated, my teeth hurting again, “and they were going to tell us about this _when_?”  
  
“The failings of the Guild are all too human, it would appear. They know much, but things do escape them… and evidence of this alliance was beyond their grasp. Beloved, if I could resist the urge to throw Claudia over the retaining wall, surely you can hear the rest of this out?”  
  
“But the they knew what was about to happen 2 years ago,, and they still did nothing?” I was pacing then, or trying to. The room was too small for more than 5 steps in any direction.  
  
“Actually, they did provide us with some help, even after I roughed one of them up and forced him to divulge a secret. By their standards, that’s being considerably helpful.” Imriel reached around and pulled me into his lap, arms circling me as if to shield me from my rage. And happily, it worked, heads together and my arm around his shoulder, I was soon myself again.  
  
“What did she know of Phaing?” Phedre asked gently.  
  
“Less than we do, in some ways, I gave her the first good physical description she had ever heard. Claudia _suspects_ … that damnable word again, that she has been active in the east of this ocean, but under a different name, as either an assassin or a defender against assassination. Rumors abound, contradictory ones as to whether she is a Witch of some kind, or even doubts if she is entirely human or not. All that seems clear is that she has good connections in Hellas and with the Chowatti, and that she enjoys leaving false clues to confuse people who are trying to find anything out about her.”  
  
“Either that, or that infamous Guild is holding back, again.” I let my voice go as soft and drained as I felt. “They withheld their ‘theory’ about a Carthage-Ephesium alliance until after it became worthless. They would hold back about Phaing as well.”  
  
“But, what has been happening in the last 2 days still makes no sense!” Phedre looked so frustrated, I feared she would not sleep at all for days.  
  
“I have a theory of my own.” Joscelin was not a man of many words, so we all paid close attention when he was in a verbose mood. “Start with the fact that the original message was sent from a place that could take up to 2 months to reach the City of Elua. Next we have the fact that as little as a month ago, we ourselves had no idea that events on Kyrnos would invite a visit from us. That message would have been automatically diverted at Marisikos, regardless of the wishes of the _sender_. The only place where the smooth running of our staff went awry was where it was read in public before one of our aides had a look at it. A minor error as it was marked a nothing but standard diplomatic correspondence, and we had a lot of such messages coming in and going out that day. All of this could have been an unpleasant surprise to Phaing herself.”  
  
We were not ready believe what he said, not as he said it, but all of us were too interested in following this path of reason to interrupt him.  
  
“Now, we have this rabble-rouser appear on Kyrnos, not long before we arrived, and only just began her work when word reaches her of our arrival at the other side of the island. No network established yet, nothing accomplished but to set the Clergy to a highly distracting argument among themselves. And then, suddenly, we are here. Or at Ajaccio, rather. Riding out to have a look for herself would be impulsive, risky perhaps. So, what if that is just the sort of person we face? She comes cloaked and alone, not drawing attention to herself, and meets a Messenger of the same sort she has used to contact us. Imagine her surprise at finding your reply to a message that by rights should not have been delivered yet, and thought to be destined for a place hundreds of miles from here. Phaing scribbles a reply, takes the messenger’s clothes so that she can return to Porto Valla incognito, but before she can be on her way, she is attacked by archers… and at that point we become the aggressors.”  
  
“ _We_?” I yelped.  
  
“Aggressors?” Imriel was just as offended.  
  
“Yes, _we_.” Joscelin continued, unperturbed. “Or rather, our allies did. Peace, Sidonie! I can see that you are done with them, but from the point of view of the person that the arrows were being fired at, it’s a very moot point.”  
  
I had no argument for that. Phedre sat back with a faint smile on her face, listening to Joscelin continue to spin out his line of reasoning; “She prevails, has just enough time to seize the horses, and now the thunder of our hooves reaches her peculiar ears. We drive our horses as hard as we dare, and so does she. Not leading us on, but simply doing the intelligent thing if she wanted to reach her ship. Even so, we would have lost her were it not for Roccu. And at last, she reaches a ready-made roadblock that she could not have failed to notice earlier. Her timing is perfect, its all so tidy… and then some interlopers arrive. The Caerdicci don’t have such good timing, but they have made a hidden approach and she warns us, warns us in a language that a few of us can understand, but not the Mercenaries. And, once battle is joined, she rides a blown horse over the edge of a cliff to join that battle, on our side.” He paused a moment, staring at the wall, or through it, more like.  
  
“To kill you?” Imriel asked.  
  
“No.” Joscelin and I both shook our heads. “To do what she loves; fight. We saw it in her eyes. Phaing may be a killer… well, there can be no doubt that she _is_ one, but when she crossed swords with me, there was joy in it for her.”  
  
I must have gone cold, Imriel started to rub his hand up and down my back, reflexively, as he did on winter nights. “And she let you go to Phedre.” I tilted my head at Imriel. “So she knew Joscelin’s name, and therefore his reputation… but she guessed who you were as well, and she was all business with you.”  
  
Imriel nodded, to me and then to Joscelin. “She called me your 'pup', not exactly an attempt to curry favor. And then she ran.”  
  
“Time was running out, she would have been surrounded had she remained a moment longer. Away she went, to a ship that was standing by for her. One too small to hold many passengers or soldiers, if any, but one that looked ideal for smuggling her person in and out of various places. Hostile places, even. All of which leads us here, following her on the exact course she would be taking if Cytheria were her actual destination.”  
  
I frowned, and looked down at my hands, remembering what I had foolishly blurted out in front of the ever-inquisitive Claudia Fulvia.  
  
“I don’t like it.” Phedre had taken hold of Jocelyn’s hand at some point, and now she lifted their linked hands above the table. “Even if what you said is all true, it still makes no sense!”  
  
“Too few pieces, too large a puzzle.” Imriel agreed.  
  
Phedre nodded at her favorite student. “One piece remains unchanged. No matter if she wants us to or not, we are following the trail of an absolute savage.”  


 

***

  
  
Despite Phedre’s misgivings, we agreed to go as far as Messina before making any further decisions about going as far as distant Cytheria. Messages posted by Birds had brought word of survivors there, and Claudia had promised to send word back for them to be ready to meet us there.

  
Servants waiting for us in our cabin insisted on getting Imriel and myself out of our filthy clothes before we could fall into the rack where we could sleep. Sleep we did, so soundly that we were unaware of the strong wind that took control of the ship, heeling it over slightly and speeding it along. A Zephyr they call it, a strong and stormless wind that could blow for days at a time. This one favored us, and our quarry too, as I learned that evening.  
  
We woke famished in the hour before sunset, and heard that Phaedra and Joscelin were already up and on deck. Once our immediate needs were taken care of we joined them there, and I stopped feeling so badly about dragging them along on this…. whatever this thing _was_. They both looked fresher than I felt, waving for us to join them at the railing. Tactfully, they ignored my stiff walk, saddle-sores and the canted deck combined to make even a short walk awkward. Joscelin even had the temerity to appear free of his customary sea-sickness. The ocean itself seemed oddly composed; a multitude of small waves ruffled by the persistent wind. This last item held my attention, and Captain Etrigan arrived in time to save me a few questions.  
  
Admiral Rousse was not with us, or we should never have been concerned about this ship's readiness to rescue us regardless of other concerns. Captain Etrigan was highly competent, possessed of an excellent reputation, and a seasoned Pirate-Hunter. However, he was not Rousse. “It won’t be this way for long. Tomorrow the waves will be larger, and the day after that, it will be a rough ride indeed, Princess.”  
  
“The same wind, for 3 days?”  
  
“Yes, it comes at this time of year. A reminder that Summer is coming to an end. It is entirely possible that we will be off Messina early on the 4th day.” That was better than I had hoped for, better than I could credit, and he must have seen it in my face. “Aye, a stroke of good fortune for your quest. However, if we were _fighting_ a wind like this, trying to get you back home from Messina, it would take weeks.”  
  
Captain Etrigan did not have to tell me that this journey would mean risking the storms that came unpredictably in Autumn, and closed our part of the Southern Sea to traffic in Winter. If we went beyond Messina, we would probably not be able to return home until Spring unless we traveled overland. And even then, we might miss the Longest Night. Yes, that was the thought that came to mind, frivolous as it may seem. I had never missed one, unlike Phaedra, and very unlike dear Imriel. Messina would be the point of decision indeed.  
  
“Does this mean we are catching up to Phaing?”  
  
The good Captain shook his head. “Nay, Highness. Our ship would be faster than that one with the wind _behind_ us, and She would have the advantage sailing across the wind. What we have here is just betwixt the two. We still have the bi-… the target in sight. They sail exactly the same heading we are.”  
  
“As would any ship trying to reach the Eastern half of this Sea from where we set out.” Imriel did not even spare a glance forward, sails blocked the view in any case. “Captain, you had a good look at that ship, and the folk on it. What do you make of it?”  
  
Etrigan scratched his chin and half-turned to include Phedre and Joscelin in his briefing. “Well, the ship itself was somewhat like what the Illyrian Pirates used, once upon a time.” Phedre, who knew Illyrians better than any of us, smiled and nodded. “But, _more_ so. More sail, and orlops so they can warp themselves in and out of port without help. Cleaner lines, and a Ballistae mounted amidships. The crew itself was the usual mixed bag, not remarkable in any way that I could make note of at the time. This woman you are after, I took her for a passenger at first, but they deferred to her and she traded my men curse for curse… and since you are trying to solve a mystery I will add what I would not in mixed company; once clear, she mooned us.”  
  
“What does _that_ mean?” I have spent too much of my life inside a Palace.  
  
The Captain glanced away. “Well Princess, she flipped her skirt up and saluted us with her backside.”  
  
So, my imaginings had been wrong, Phaing had not been waving, not with her _hat_. “Is this normal behavior in such circumstances?”  
  
He nodded. “On occasion, but it is normally the prerogative of a Captain to do so.”  
  
I glanced at Phedre and then our men. A female Captain was unheard of, in this or any other sea, but my mind skipped ahead to the next relevant point of consideration; “Its her ship, she owns it.”  
  
“That would be my guess. Your enemy has the same control over the course of her ship as you do over this one.”  
  
I shook my head. Joscelin's theory about her moves and their meaning was clearer in my mind, now that I had slept on it. “Enemy? I… that word is making me uncomfortable. Something about calling her that rings false in my mind.”  
  
Joscelin and Phedre looked pleased to hear me say so, not Imriel. “But, Carthage!”  
  
“Yes, Carthage. I remember it, no matter how much I’d like to forget it and everything about it! We weren’t ourselves when we were there, and who’s fault was that?” He looked a little shocked to hear me say so. “Imriel, we are on our way to see survivors, the slaves removed were said to be on their way back to Aragonia. Slaves that the Carthaginians had _promised_ to release and yet never did! So, it does appear that ‘liquidated’ was rather overstating the case, yes? In any event, we have days to relax, consider and prepare for what comes next. Unless, or course, this wind shifts.”  
  
It did not, not for nearly a week. A steady stream of air that seemed without end propelled us. We all went forward to satisfy our curiosity, and could see just a speck near to the edge of the ocean. “Horizon-Blue, very clever.” Imriel did not sound pleased, or forgiving of whoever had thought of that trick. “Were the hull not close enough, we’d have a devil of a time spotting those sails at all.”  
  
By the next day, only the man up in the Crow’s Next could verify that it was still in sight, the rising waves giving our lookouts as much trouble as they did poor Joscelin. We finally lost sight of them approaching the Scylla, the straights between the Isle of Sicilia and the mainland. There were rocky isles to be avoided, which we naturally approached in the night separating the 3rd and 4th day of our journey. Then there was the traffic, but that proved to be a boon of its own. Captain Etrigan shouted out questions to ships passing nearby through a funnel that directed his voice over the waves. Other Captains shouted back; Yes, that damnable ship with 3 blue sails had been seen. They had not slowed or given much courtesy in their passage.  
  
In the lea of Sicilia, the wind abated and the Cap[tain was preparing to approach Messina when a Pinance, a ship so small it could almost have been called a boat instead, came out to meet us.  
“Claudia Fulvia sends her regards!”  
  
The wind that had aided our passage had not hindered the Bird post.

  
I was disappointed to see just two people clamber aboard our ship, a lad of about 14 or 15 summers named Marko along with a Skaldian man more than twice that age, who was called Hrolvath. They glanced about at our ship as if they had never seen anything so fine in their lives. They became positively tongue-tied when they were shown to the room where we dined and held meetings at a table large enough for 10 to be seated. The four of us met them with smiles and refreshment, but it did little to set them at ease to find that they were to be interviewed by the heirs to the d’Angeline throne.  
  
Hrolvath fidgeted, and backed away from a chair as if he was afraid to damage it, and he nearly knocked over a servant and her tray of cheese. Swallowing nervously, Marko asked to be excused so that he could use a commode before speaking to us. While he was gone we managed to coax Hrolvath into taking a chair and relaxing with some of our Brandy. He spoke his native tongue, until he realized that all of us had a good understanding of Caerdicci.  
  
“The Barron tells me you are wanting to know about Carthage and the _Dohk Alfa_ r.”  
  
Phedre was puzzled by those last two words nearly as much as the rest of us were, but instead she asked; “The Barron?”  
  
“ _Ja_ , High Barron Balbo, Messina be his, and Marko is his get as well. I brought him here on my way home after the _Felds Marschal_ disbanded the army. She said go our own way, job done already, and so that was that.”  
  
I felt my skin go cold and tight when I realized we were sitting in the presence of a one of the men who had been in the Army that Phaing had assembled to kill Carthage. My beloved must have been giving him a look to suit our mood, because Hrolvath glanced at a porthole, as if measuring it. He was thinking he might have to jump through it.  
  
“Wait.” Not ‘ _stop_ ’ but wait, Phedrea bid us, then to Hrolvath. “You were there when Carthage was burned?”  
  
“No Lady, too late. We were all too late. Half of year of work and travel, and we were one day late.”  
  
“For what, and what does _Dohk Alfar_ mean?”  
  
Hrolvath tried with words, and then with gestures. He turned his eyes up with this fingertips, as if to show Asian features, similar in only the most superficial way to what I had seen of Phaing. “And ears like this, pointed at the tips. Voice like honey or turpentine, depending on her mood, moves like a ghost. Does not age so much-“  
  
“A _dark_ ELF?!” Phe’dre’s shout cut him off. She who had seen so much strangeness in the world found this hard to conceive. The very name of God lived in her mind, her understanding of things was beyond the keen of almost everyone else in this world. But the notion of Fey creatures of legend come to life looked like a joke to her, another foolish ruse meant to distract us. _Such things simply didn’t belong in this word_ , was my thought.  
  
I was more right than I could imagine, as things turned out.  
  
“Yes, yes! Its true, I will tell you all I know-“ Hrolvath was interrupted by Marko’s return. The boy looked more calm and collected now, and carried himself more like a Barron’s son. “I think Marko should tell what he knows first, then I must tell you what I have to say. It will make more sense to you then.”  
  
Marko asked us all to introduce ourselves again, and now he was smiling, deeply thrilled to be the one telling his story to those of whom so many tales had been told about. At a glance, I could tell that Imriel was happy about this turn as well. For once, he could sit back and do the listening.

  
“I was studying in a small collegium near New Carthage when they came, and was captured in such a way that there was no proof of my identity, no one to vouch for me. That and what followed is not important, and best left unsaid in any event. What matters is the week before the end. In my dreams, I was flying, I was vast and powerful and I was above Carthage at night. I could escape and live again as I was meant to…. this made waking up the next morning very difficult. But I wanted to dream that same dream again the next night, and I did! But this time, there was more. _He_ asked me who I was, what I was. He wanted to see into me, but with my permission.”  
  
“He?” three of us asked at the same time.  
  
“Merrin, but please, let me tell it as I remember. I had nothing to lose, no pride left at all, so I let this bringer of dreams see my very soul. It was not so much like the rapes, not like what I was expecting. It was more total, and over in an instant, like a flare of Moonlight passing in one ear and out the other. I can’t say how or why, but it left me feeling better, more connected to things outside myself. Merrin would help me and the others like me escape. He did not know how yet, but if I… if all of us could abide a few days, all would be well.”  
  
Marko paused to drink some water, and none of us asked any questions while he did.  
  
“The dreams started to come back 3 nights later, he told me/us to be ready, to have things at hand, but not too much to run with. There was not much I could do with what was in my cell, but I slept with my clothes on and my blanket rolled up tight, sandals right where I could step into them, a little stolen food under the cot. And that last day, just after sunset, the guard that watched over my end of the manor opened my door, and I knew he was not there to have his fun with me… his eyes looked different, blank. He told me to get my things and go to the main gate of the city. Oh, I went, and quickly! I did not look back, but I did hear the Guard lock himself inside my cell, and then fall into my cot. Strange, but there was more than strange coming next.”  
  
Under the table, I was gripping Imriel’s hand every bit as hard as he gripped mine. Mind-controlling magic, just as we had suffered!  
  
Marko continued; “Before I had even left that manor through gates that I was delighted to find open, I met another boy, one from the kitchens that I had rarely seen… but we looked at each other, and we knew! We were together in this. I must have been grinning like a fool because he was too, and we linked hands and ran. He knew side-streets and alleys, and in them we met more like us; young, enslaved, or people of the streets. Mostly we were not seen, but there were times when I was sure that we had been seen by men that just walked past and said nothing, nor did they look at us with any more thought than you give a some Flies.  
  
“Carthage is a big place, it took us an hour to reach the City Gate. There were hundreds of us there, all trying to crouch in the shadows, but too many to stay hidden. Then, _He_ was there among us, stepping out of a shadow within the shadows. So aloof, aristocratic, yet very much in the moment with the rest of us… somewhat like you Prince Imriel. Not young, nor terribly old, but his hair was grey. The light was too dim to tell more. Merrin, we knew him right away, somehow. We were glad to see him, and he to see us, yet not so much as we had hoped for. It was more like he was doing his duty, or perhaps he was in a bad mood, thinking of what he would do next.  
  
“Merrin walked right up to the gate and threw the man in charge a heavy purse, and the gates were opened to him, and us. The Guards were not happy to see so many of us rush through, but they were bribed and could do nothing without exposing themselves, so they let it be and close the gates behind us. We ran and ran until we were too tired, we walked, and then ran again. Another hour and more, we came to a hill we had dreamed of. Inland it was, a little, due south of that cursed city. We looked at each other, not speaking yet, we did not have the air in our lungs or the words in our heads yet. I don’t know what we were waiting for, but we really could not have gone father. It was the middle of the night, very dark, but the City had lights still burning and it looked so damn close… sorry Ladies. This is the 3rd time I have told this story and I keep feeling like I am seeing it again.”  
  
“That is actually helpful to us.” I did my best to give him an encouraging smile. “Please continue.”  
  
“Thank you _Princezza._ I was looking back at the city when I saw it approaching. The sea was calm, no moon, but there was lamplight reflected in the water, and I could see something like the head of a Crocodile. Like in shape, yes, but larger than 3 of your longboats. I think I could see it more clearly than those in Carthage because of the hill, the height… or perhaps the men on watch were not watching so well. There was mist coming from it’s nostrils, not much at first, but it spread until it seemed to be all over the waterfront, and I could not even see that great head anymore. Then came dull noises of things breaking. I could see the masts of ships starting to go over sideways, as when ships sink. Still there was no alarm!”

  
“We think it was a poisonous vapor.” Hrolvath added, trying to be helpful. He had heard this story before. “It may have induced sleep, or death. Made no difference in the end.”  
  
Marko nodded, and continued; “Then, the thing I thought was a Giant Crocodile climbed out of water at the beach south of the city, not far from we on that hill, and shook itself free of the ocean. And then it spread its wings.”  
  
He paused to take another drink, this time with Brandy added to his water. “Yes fair Ladies and Gentlemen, we all saw it, it was a Dragon. Big, mighty it was, but smart too. I saw how one such beast could kill a city of a quarter of a million that night. The great, black thing took to wing and breathed just a little of its fiery breath on the gates. Just enough, Hrolvath tells me, to weld the iron banding on those gates shut. And then, the _Dragon_ ,” he spoke that word with particular emphasis at Phedre and Joscelin, who did look a bit skeptical, “went to work. A handful of passes it made, setting fires to many blocks of buildings each time. There was a pattern that I could not understand yet, they seemed random to me and to those near me on that hill. Then that monster, that Dragon, gripped the wall and started beating his wings, fanning the flames. It shifted positions and few times and did the same. Twice, I think he was attacked by Soldiers, for he roared and thrashed about with his tail and his claws, smashing towers and whole buildings. The creature… did not seem to be excited of enjoying its work so much. There was no wasted motion, only…more like the efficiency of a butcher, or a grave digger.”  
  
Hrolvath winced. “You’ve had time to think about the wording of this account since last you told it, young master. Have you given up on the Clergy for a career as a mendicant?”  
  
Marko hung his head. This young scion and the Barbaric Mercenary had come to an understanding in their travels. “I take your point. Its best if you take over for now, yes?”  
  
“Yes young master, I shall.”


	9. Chapter 9

“I would be pleased if you would start at the beginning. The start of Phaing’s involvement in all this, if you don’t mind.” The others looked at me briefly, as if they admired my mental focus. The truth is that I was not ready to deal with the idea of a Dragon, an actual, living, breathing Dragon just yet. It was too much for me, what with the question mark Phaing represented looming larger than ever at this point. I wanted to reduce one or the other to something understandable. Small, human-seeming Phaing seemed like the right place to start.  
  
Hrolvath put his hand on the edge of the table, arms straight out, and his eyes became heavily lidded as he spoke. His voice became clearer, more focused, and he began his account.  
  
“Over a decade ago this _Alfar_ woman walked among us for the first time. She wasn’t some ethereal forest spirit, Phaing drank and argued and loved with my father’s generation in half a dozen different places. Exploring she called it, or crusading at times. She spoke of how slavery was a bad idea, and how it didn’t pay off… economically, I mean. She warned of letting ourselves get too soft, how there was a deadly threat to the East and how we might have to serve as the shield of Europe someday. Horseclans making deals with a kingdom run by madmen just to secure their flank, and so on. It seemed like strange talk, but she has a way about her that made people listen, and she rose to any challenge just to get our attention. Then one day, she was gone.”  
  
Horseclans, Tartars? I looked at Imriel, but his eyes were focused on Phedre and Joscelin, who looked pale. A Kingdom run by madmen, that must have meant Darsanja!  
  
“And less than a year ago, she comes back. Oh, wroth she was, too late to help you fine folk with your troubles, but very much about making sure it never could happen again. She accepts duels and does her tricky fighting to make the skeptics shut up, and she tells us there is loot to be hand, land too. The Army of Carthage was weak, few veterans and a batch of new recruits is all. So she comes away with 1,000 hot-heads and Third Sons like myself with few prospects. Good men, and on the way south we were joined by twice as many Chowatti. She is popular among them too, seems Phaing makes a home there, or once did. Its hard to get the straight truth from those Chowatti, about _anything_ important to them. Marching through the winter isn’t so hard on the Illyrian coast, and we met up Caerdicci Cavalry, Hellas Archers and some Illyrians. Of the later, I am speaking of those that would do more than just ship us over there. Phaing paid for our food and places to stay, I don’t know how she _did_ , and the Chowatti just smiled and shrugged when I asked. They knew, I’d wager half my toes on it. Our numbers had doubled again, but it would be a month before the Illyrians would risk the winds. We drilled and we drilled for weeks, which was new to me but the Field Marshal insisted and those Hellas boys were helpful-“  
  
“A moment please, what is that, a Field Marshal?” Phedre was taking notes.  
  
“Oh, well, it’s the only title Phaing would allow for herself. Its like…. What an Emperor was for Kings, a Field Marshal was for Generals.”   
  
“A grand title for the leader of… what, 6,000 men at that point?”  
  
“You could say that, but we were not done yet. What we had there was men of 5 different countries, not counting stragglers from other places. There were a couple of Alban wanderers, and even a Habiru Chirugeon, I think. Takes a lot to hammer out good order in a group like that. And she spent nights with the leaders, teaching them things and making them solve problems together. Not being leader of anything more than my dozen spears, I didn’t see none of that, but by the time we were off, it was said that the ten men in charge could guess at what the rest would do in a given situation. The voyage by sea was pretty dreary, but when we got to Tripoltania, there were Mnekhetan regulars and other folk to meet us, brought us up over 10,000. The Mnekhetan were nearly caught flat-footed, but if they could not stop us then they had to be involved. Couldn't just sit on the side and watch someone else deal with their most notorious neighbor, eh?"  
  
Joscelin brought his hand down on the table. “A whole 10,000 of you, is that it? Did you really think that would be enough to bring down Carthage, to kill everyone you met?”  
  
Hrolvath’s eyes snapped wide open. “What do you mean, kill _everyone_?”  
  
“Please, let him finish?” Phedre put a hand on Joscelin’s shoulder, and he relented. Imriel and I were also skeptical, but questions could wait. Our witness was doing a good job of presenting facts without many opinions mixed in, and coming quickly to the crucial matters.  
  
However, Hrolvath started going off track to defend himself; “It was the _nobles_ we were after, Casseline. Those folk that could read, and that means Nobles and their servants. The rest of the people there, well, they didn’t stint when it came to making a profit on the path that their leaders set them on, just ask poor Marko about how all that worked. Almost all of them… _ach_ …. you’ll see." He scratched his head and continued. "Well now, we had the ships, but we also had to take turns marching along the coast, to get tough again and get our land-legs back. Sensible, but I think that we might have beat the Dragon their if we hadn’t done that, and some of the men were dragging their feet by then. There was something that made the men grumble; Here we were, heading up to take down a walled city, but we had no real siege weapons. A score of these Ballistae was all, mounted all clever-like on flatbed wagons. You could spin them all ‘round and fire at high angles, very nice gear. But we had no catapults, no Trebuchete, and no towers. Now, normally you don’t go hauling all that with you, you make it on site. One look at the terrain and we knew there would be no good timber there, and we didn’t have the small iron parts for locks and so on. The Field Marshall, she makes the rounds and tells us not to worry, the gates will be open and we’ll be taking the place by storm. Even passed out maps of the city, with arrows drawn over it to show us where to go and what buildings we ought to take. Yes, you can stop looking at me like that, we eventually took it on faith that she had the right of it. You don’t _know_ her, she is no good at subterfuge.”  
  
“You think so?!” Imriel smirked at him.  
  
“I do, spent half a year in her army, such as it was, and I _listened_. Hellfire, she spoke to me, twice! Once was to dress me down for not being aggressive enough with my part of the line during a practice battle, but still… she’s… not exactly one of us. I mean, not precisely _human_. She has trouble with our ways at times. Little nuances get past her, and being subtle isn’t her strong suit. That’s what I heard from half a dozen men who were a lot closer to her than I was. One even said that the best trick she could pull was to tell you the truth in an off-putting way, and let you run around thinking it was a lie. But all in all, a good Marshall and we were all sorry about how things turned out in the end.”  
  
Phedre had dropped her quill and dove into her satchel, rifling through her papers furiously. She came up with that message, and read it, occasionally making a sound as if she was trying to avoid swallowing her own tongue as Hrolvath sat blinking at her.  
  
“Very well then, how _did_ things work out in the end?” I prompted the Skaldi.  
  
“ _Ach_ , well then, yes… I was not Cavalry and so was not with the lads that found the young master and near to 1,000 like him, huddled on that hill as the fires died down. We met later on. But I and the others afoot did see the flames from a half days march away. Even from there, I did catch a glimpse of the Beast. From the look of it alone, I could have been seeing at a long-tailed Eagle or something, outlined by the flames. The size of a thing is hard to tell at that distance. So, eyes alone told me little. But I swear to you, I and every man looking the way I did felt as if our hearts had been squeezed by a hand made of ice, I can’t explain it better than that. And when we caught up, we could well believe that it was a Dragon that did Carthage in. Phaing called it a Fire-Storm, didn’t she lad?”  
  
Makro resumed the telling then. “She did. As Hrolvath said, the Cavalry arrived that night, so late that it was closer to morning. The Dragon was leaving by then. He made a few more passes to burn a few places where people were trying to climb over the walls, and the harbor too. By then, the main fires had come together, and became tremendous! Not only that, but it moved about. Cliff-sized walls of fire dancing back and forth… all I can think of to describe it is the way the fires in a blacksmith’s forge moves when its stoked by the bellows. The strange part was, this did not need a bellows after the Dragon left. Air was being _pulled_ into it, somehow. We felt it as a breeze on our distant hill, in the city it must have been like a Cyclone. We could see things being picked up and sucked right into the flames.” He bit his cheek and looked away. ”I think that some of those things must have been people.”  
  
Once again there was a moment of silence that none of us could interrupt with a good question.  
  
“This lady you are interested in arrived at the head of a hundred mounted warriors. We had been watching the city burn, most of us. Some of us, younger ones mostly, were looking away, some were crying, some had just collapsed where they were and had fallen asleep, as impossible as that sounds. We were surrounded by horsemen before we could run away, but we could see that these were no Carthaginians sent to round us up. It was so bright, we could see them clearly. I was the first to cheer them, I was one of the few that could recognize the Ceardicci among them. They smiled at us, lowering weapons or just putting them away. The dark lady did what she could for us, which was much, but that came later. She was upset when she arrived. For a moment, she was so very angry, throwing her hat at the sky and shaking her fist, screaming like a Banshee at the Dragon. It was a bad thing to see, even her own horse started to panic. While she fought her horse down, she saw us, really _looking_ at us now, and that’s when she became calmer. Or, she made herself _look_ calmer. She said things to the horsemen and most of them rode off, then she dismounted and walked among us. She promised that all the bad things were over now, and that she would be sending us home soon. She asked how we came to be there, but when we mentioned Merrin’s name she spat and her voice became angry again, so we stopped. Her words I don’t remember very well, my eyes kept going back to the city, but I remember two words she used; “appeasement” and _Firestorm_.”  
  
Phedre nodded sharply, eyes riveted to one particular line of that first message, and then motioned impatiently for them to continue.  
  
“I don’t really have anything left that would be terribly important. We were fed, slept outside the first couple of nights, and then there we were marched back to the harbor and they arm put us up in the few intact buildings there. Ones with roofs, I mean. Many men were staying, not in the city, out in the countryside where there were still a few people. Soon there were ships to take us home, but I was not Aragonian and I was having a some difficulty finding a ship that would take me and the very few others to an eastwards Home. Thus I met Hrolvath.”  
  
“ _Ja,_ and to tell the truth, I was looking for a way back myself. I’d had a look around that city once it cooled down some, two days later. The place is a wasteland now, just hideous. Forget finding a particular building, with a map in my hand I could not find a _street_ I was looking for. There were places in the city center where stone had melted.”  
  
“Liquidated.” I breathed out that word, looking to Phedre. That word had been used in the message from Phaing, and had sounded so histrionic then.

  
“Needless to say, there wasn’t much to loot. I wasn’t about to join the rooting around in the rickety cellars for gobs of melted silver or gold with a few gems still clinging to them. No, I’d be thinking too much about if someone had been wearing them at the time. So, I was wandering the shore looking for flotsam from the ships that had sunk, something like a chest fill of myrrh or silks. That’s where I met the young master here, and his soon-to-be-“  
  
“Please don’t” Marko said quietly.  
  
“ _Ach_ , forgive me.... now, I knew that Marko here needed help, and by helping him I could help myself get home with enough _lucre_ to make it worthwhile. Your personal stories are not why I mention this, the thing is that this was the second time I spoke to the Field Marshall. Word among the men was that She’d shot her bolt. In the week since we had arrived, horsemen and ships confirmed that a couple of other cities had been burned, and that the rural areas had been ignored. We just didn’t have the mobility to deal with it, not that we could have done much in any case, and it hit her hard. No more bombast and joking with the men…. and then a funny thing; we were dividing up lands and loot at that time, and she took no part in it. When we asked her if she wanted anything, all she said was “Forgiveness.” Seemed a bit morbid to me when I heard about that, but on _this_ day she was at the shore too, arranging trips home for the liberated slaves. It was good to see her animated, confounding the rumors a bit. And two months after the only other time I had ever spoken with her , she calls out to me; “Hrolvath! What’s this, are you putting together a family of your own?”  
  
Marko shifted and tried not to look uncomfortable. Hrolvath skipped over something in his head and continued;  
  
“Well, _no_ says I, Just looking to get the wayward Caerdicci back home. She looked for a moment like she’d use her own ship for that. But no, she’s heading north, and she gets us set up with Illyrian fellow that is going back to being a legitimate trader just as soon as he can unload his cargo of scrap metal not far from Messina. _Ahhmm_ … I suppose you want a description of her?”  
  
We nodded.  
  
“Very well. As awful as she was when she was mad, she shines like the rising sun if you catch her right. Dark skin like a Mnekhetan somewhat, but with blond hair full of darker streaks. Large eyes, slanted and an Asiatic fold to them, very dark in color. So, she might look part Chowati, but there is something very different about her as well… I mean, you stop and look at her, and its like ‘Oh , yeah, that would _also_ be a nice way for people to look.’ Interesting, but I didn’t want to get close enough to touch her, if you take my meaning. Too strange, maybe it was those ears. She’s always armed to the teeth, wears nothing that gets in the way, even kicks her boots off the moment she goes aboard ship or enters someone’s tent. About Her voice, somebody taught her to start her to start a shout at the bottom of her belly, she can be louder than you’d believe 4-stone can be.”  
  
That was when Hrolvath must have seen something he didn’t like in our eyes. He leaned back in his chair and cracked his knuckles. “Now, don’t think for a moment that I have forgotten who I am talking to. But I have to ask; what is all this to your esteemed Highnesses? What intentions to you have for our Lady Phaing?”


	10. Chapter 10

I had been trying to concentrate on maintaining my famous icy reserve; while under the table Imriel and I had been gripping each others hand some tightly that at times that I think we had bruised our bones. An intelligent Dragon added a new and vast dimension to our difficulties.  
  
Phedre unrolled another sheet, I recognized it as a copy she had made of Phaing’s message. She had done translations into a couple of other languages, to see if she could find hidden clues that way. This one must have been in Skaldic, because she pointed at Hrolvath and asked me, “May I?”  
  
I glanced at Marko, wondering.  
  
“Young master, have you ever seen such a fine ship?” Hrolvath had no difficulty picking up subtle signs. “The Captain would be willing to show you around, before we leave, but time is running short.”  
  
Marko was not fooled, but he knew when to withdraw from the company of his elders. “Yes, I suppose so.” Standing, he begged permission to leave our ‘majestic presence’ in a subdued voice, and slipped out of the room.  
  
“Can you read your mother tongue, or Ceardicci?” Phe'dre asked Hrolvath.  
  
“My own language, only. I learned Ceardicci on the march. What have you got there?”  
  
“This was received by the Royal Heirs just over a week ago, sent as if it was from the Government of Carthage. The sender was Phaing.” Hrolvath reached for it, but Phe'dre held on to it long enough to add; “It was meant to be read in the Palace in the City of Elua. Instead it reached us at Ajaccio.”  
  
“Kurnos?” He used the Greek word for Kyrnos, revealing that the men of Hellas had taught more than Drill to their allies.  
  
He read the Message, alternately smiling and then frowning, and at one point he barked out a short laugh and then apologized for doing so. By the end he looked grim and withdrawn, casting aside the parchment and walking away from the table to put his hands on the frame of the porthole, head down and staring at the floor.  
  
“It’s a hard thing, finding out you have been used, even if it was to do the right thing for a good reason.” I said gently.  
  
“Forgiveness. Its all she wanted, and all I can give now.” Hrolvath grunted at the decking. “But, _why_?  
  
“This is what we are trying to find out. As you can imagine, its been a difficult process. Phaing has been very misleading and your account was the first we have heard of any Dragon. Do you have any idea why she would want the world to think that it was you and your men who did all that to Carthage?”  
  
“No. You  are putting a lot of faith into the words of a pair of strangers. How do you really know it was something as fantastical as a Dragon?”  
  
Phedre smiled indulgently at Hrolvath. “I see the truth of it in your eyes.” And she glanced at Imriel for confirmation. He nodded. “Yes, it could seem like a tale told to protect yourselves, but as things stand we are faced with the fact that _you_ believe it.”  
  
“Once you have had a look at that place, so will you. Nothing men could do can would turn a whole city into something that looks like the face of the Moon. No, but why the lie?” He turned from the portal, face slack and eyes glaring at the floor. “People would rather it be true, easier to believe that men did it than a mythical monster, unless you see the place, and how many ever will? And… why _you_ good people? I don't understand your part in this. What, if I may ask, were you doing on Kurnos?”  
  
“We can answer those questions, but in turn we want you to answer one for us once we have; Why would she try to mislead us?” I asked, and then told the story of Kyrnos in brief. I left out the parts involving my giving her a slight wound, and about Claudia’s involvement in the Unseen Guild.  
  
“If you’ll excuse me, I’m in a room with some of the mightiest people in Europe, and you are asking _me_ such things. Its rather incredible, to me.” He sat back down and tested the range of motion in his hands and fingers while he spoke. “She spoke of you De-Angelines, I have been told. She admires you, let it be known that were any of us to raise a hand against you, we’d see the very worst she had to offer. So, I think it should be obvious what is happening, with that note and why she went straightaway to Kurnos to give you a nice distracting mess to deal with on your own doorstep. She’s trying to mislead you and distract you. Phaing is trying to lead you away from the Dragon itself. Trying to protect you, or maybe she wants to deal with him, her own way.”  
  
My head was swimming, so many important and upsetting things revealed by this interview, I might have missed the next thing said in that room had it not been Imriel asking it. “That’s speculation, lets stay with the facts. I can see that you now regret meeting us, spoiling your Field Marshal’s hard work, so lets leave that be. The Ballistae, how were they organized?”  
  
“Hmm? Oh, yes, organized, we were always that. It was all very specific; THree Ballistae with 12 archers to protect them, and 24 spears to protect the archers. She was always so very organized, must be why nothing went wrong with the whole march to get there.”  
  
“And the poison?”  
  
“Buckets of it, on the wagons…. Hey!” Hrolvath looked up in some alarm. An army using poison was another black mark that he would rather not be known. “How did you know about that?”  
  
Imriel sighed. “I didn’t, for certain, until just now. But, surely, you must have realized her true purpose in this long ago. Your army was not intended to take Carthage, you were there to help her kill a Dragon that Phaing knew was going to strike there. It’s a hard thing, but-“  
  
“We could have done both!” Hrolvath’s fists hit the table. “She’d not have left us with nothing! Phaing hated those people, and anyone else that takes slaves, she’s downright psychotic when she sees it happening in front of her, and always tries to convince people it’s the wrong thing to do. No, things were going to change there, and after all the training, I would have bet my army against triple our weight in Carthaginians and won every night for a week running! Bah, I’d not give a trencher of piss for Merrin’s chances of staying ahead of her for long.”  
  
“Yes, this Merrin person, the one with mind-powers.” Pherde asked her long-withheld question about the mystery man. She pointed at a previously misunderstood line in the original message. “It would appear that she is not the only one that is opposed to the Dragon.”  
  
“One in the same.” Hrolvath groused, shaking his head.  
  
“I beg your pardon?”  
  
“The lad didn’t want to tell you, he owes him his life, but if you are going to pursue this, you need to know. Phaing named him when she arrived on that hill, cursing him before she had talked to any of the refugees. Merrin _is_ the Dragon, and she didn't see him in any shape but the Dragon in Carthage." He paused to survey our stunned faces. "Not so much like the tales now, is it? A beast like that who can appear human, and cloud men’s minds… mayhap he hit Carthage like that because he does not like competition so much.”  
  
All of us but Joscelin reached for the Brandy at the same time.  
  
“I think I understand now.” Phedre said once she had her fill, glancing at the line that had been overlooked. "I see now… the poison, poison for Balistea bolts, didn’t that raise any eyebrows?”  
  
Hrolvath shrugged. “No orders concerning it, just was made available ‘ _as needed, y'all will know it if the time come_ s’ she says. I assumed it was for the archers. The seals were never broken, and afterwards we just dumped it all out in the fields. Stank for days, I’d not try growing any crops near that city.”  
  
“How….” I could not finish my question, or the thought behind it. I had reached my limit.  
  
“Will you come with us?” Joscelin asked Hrolvath.  
  
“... ahhhh, hmmph. Headed _where_ , to do what?”  
  
Jocelyn arched an eyebrow at him, and the room was silent for a long moment.  
  
“No.” He shook his head slowly. ”When I was a boy, I had to help put my Dog down, rabies. Once was enough.”  
  
I was sorry to see him go. He had a rather keen mind, not what I would expect from a Skaldi sell-sword. “That’s not what this is about, not after what we have heard from you. Not… unless she really is out of her mind. Hrolvath, look at me please. _Is_ she mad? Or do you mean the Dragon?” He thought for a moment, and then shrugged. He had no opinion, or perhaps none that he thought we would believe. I persisted; “Where did she and Merrin come from? What is the nature of this war between them?”  
  
Hrolvath shook his head. “I think that its between them and themselves alone.” I didn’t think he really could tell us more, but I wanted him to come with us, and so I tossed my own coin purse on the table. He hesitated, and then opened it to see Gold and Silver, and he withdrew only 2 small bronze coins and dropped the purse back on the table. “I am Skaldi, and now thanks to the good Baron, a Freeman of Sicilia. I ask to take my leave now, and return to my duties. May I leave?”  
  
His face had become a mask, something like a brick wall. He’d reached his limit too, and all I could do was nod and wave him off.  
  
On his way out, he touched the corner of the translation of Phaing’s message, and laid the pair of coins down on the table. “For your trouble?”  
Phedre blinked the distant look from her eyes, looked at him for a heartbeat, and then nodded. _All knowledge is worth having_. Or in this case, perhaps an exactly truthful copy was better than letting him wander off with the message as he recollected it. His fellow Veterans deserved to know the truth.  
  
“One last thing.” Imriel asked as Hrolvath was opening the door. “Do you know if this fey woman, Phaing, can use magic?”  
  
“Yes.” Was all Hrolvath said as he closed the door behind him.


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

 

 

Legally, there was nothing we could do to stop him from leaving, and I no longer wanted to. He could have made himself a liability if forced to come with us. In truth, I had heard enough, I did not _want_ to know more, not just yet.

It was time to decide if we would go on, or back home. Turning back now was our last chance to be sure we would make it before winter’s storms barred out path. Unless….

“Phedre, did you send word to the Master of the Straits from Kyrnos?” I asked. She shook her head, and indeed, why would our pursuit of a lone trouble-maker require his attention? “Do so now, we’ll send a boat ashore. We continue to Cytheria, instantly.”

All three of them were taken aback, for different reasons.

  
Phedre wanted more time to think, Joscelin shook his head regretfully, and Imriel was agitated. This time it was he that rose and started pacing about. “Why _there_? She may have meant it when she said it, but Phaing may have changed her mind since then. We just can’t predict her now, and why should we even try?”

“Too many unknowns.” Joscelin intoned.

By the perverse accident of my birth, I actually had the final say I this argument. But, I wanted it to be an argument, I _wanted_ to make points that would allow me to sway them. Gods help me, but as Dauphine or Queen, I was not going to sit there and peremptorily order people around who had, between them, 1,000 times the experience I did when it came to this sort of thing. They would have obeyed me, that was the issue that still gives me the shakes when I ponder it. If I had simply dug in my heels and declared I was going with or without them, they would have said nothing and gone along with it, every one of them. I didn’t want that, I wanted them to _want_ this, something I said had to make them believe it was the right thing.

“Firstly, if Phaing is trying to lead us away from this trouble, this Dragon, then we could do worse than trying to lead the Dragon away from Terre D’Ange, correct?” That may have been a stretch of logic, but it was true that there was just as little chance that the 4 of us could ward off a murderous Dragon from within the walls of the city of Eula as we could from this powerful warship. Sending a warning to the Garrison and my mother was going to be far more helpful, if it came to that.

“But the Guild,” Joscelin warned, “the be-damned Guild knows about Cytheria now. What might they be panicked into doing?”

“Well, we could ask Melisande.” Imriel said with a sideways grin, then he thought of something that made his lips go tight, and he switched to fearful anger in the blink of an eye. “You don’t suppose this Crusading _Alfar_ is on her way to kill my mother, do you?”

I had not even considered that. Even Joscelin looked a little ill at the prospect. “Not for the ‘Wise Ape’, but …. to right another wrong? Gods no, no, but I can’t imagine…” I nearly lost my train of thought. Too many unknowns indeed. So I laid my final card on the table, and if they could make a good argument against it, I would allow myself to be swayed and turn for home.

“I can’t find it in me to hate this Phaing woman any more. Oh, I’m infuriated by her, and perplexed now as much as ever, but in her own way she is trying to help us. ‘ _the dragon must be appeased_ ’, she says. Well, the Dragon tried to appease her by bringing some of those poor people out of Carthage before he incinerated it. Now she throws that back in his face, in writing. I think she is still determined to kill him, or to stop him somehow. And …nothing has gone right for her since arriving at Carthage. Phaing has gone from one disaster to the next, and the only person that really knows anything about the dragon is probably going to pieces under the stress. I need to reach out to her, before she does something terrible.”

Phedre had taken a neutral pose, and maintained it. “In all my studies, I have not come across any tale that was meant to ring true which mentions either Dragons or _Alfar_ taking place in over 1,000 years. Even before that, its all mythology, the sort you get thousands of years after any trace of the truth would have been left.”

“So?”

“So, Highness, where have they been hiding all this time?”

I arched an eyebrow at her, and then smiled. "Well, Comtess, we are not going to find out by running back to the City of Elua, are we?"

 

 

 

***

 

We all labored on various messages to get them all finished and away while the Cape of Sparrows, the southernmost point of Caerdicci land, was still in sight. I to my Mother the Queen, Phedre to Hyacinth and Alba as a whole, Imriel to the Military, and Joscelin to the Temples. There was barely time to check each other’s work before the Captain’s Launch was ready to depart. This was the largest boat on Twilight Rhapsody, nearly a sea-going vessel in it’s own right. We could spare 2 Marines and 4 sailors to bring those dispatches ashore, going as far up the coast as they could with a favorable wind, and then ashore to pass them on to swift couriers riding horses in relay. If all went spectacularly well we could expect a reply in as little as a month... if we remained in place.

We were not, and that absolute minimum of a month’s delay would dog us for as far as we traveled eastwards. Tiny and necessarily short versions of our messages were added in the hope that a Temple could be found with a functional bird-post.

We did not take in the view. Heads aching and rubbing our eyes, we allowed the servants in to set the table for the evening meal. I didn’t dare talk about what our day had been all about in front of them, so I asked about how the view of the mainland looked from outside.

“Oh, this Cape is well-named, Princess.” my personal servant, named Isolde’, smiled as she brought up a pitcher to fill out wine glasses. “Sparrows everywhere, fluttering all about-“

I barely had time to register the sudden tension that gripped Imriel, and nobody in the room could grasp why he vaulted over the table and scrambled through the door racing up onto the highest deck. We followed, tying to avoid the tableware he had scattered on his way, and found him up there with a talking funnel at his mouth, shouting at the Launch.  
“Discard the Bird-post! Destroy the Bird-post messages!”

The Launch looked to be just at the edge of the range of his voice, so he turned to the Captain. “Can you signal them what I just said with your flags?” But before a signal could be set, the boat dipped its own flag once, that meant “Understood” and Imriel relaxed. When we all caught up to him we were all a bit worried, and confused. He nodded to the corner of the poop deck where none of the sailors were. “ _Stop fluttering_ , it hit me when Isolde’ said that about the Birds. Phaing’s message, it was a warning about the bird posts. That damned Dragon flies!”

Joscelin smacked the railing with his hand and nodded. “Damnit! What chance is there now of Hyacinth catching up with us?”

“None, perhaps. By the time our posts get to the straits they could be closed. Someone in Terre D'Ange will still try the Bird Post, they will deem it essential.” Phedre looked to the north and west, and instead of a sigh, she blinked. “And the Dragon could intercept it, _unless_ someone was leading him to the other end of Europe!” She had to laugh out loud. “Very well then, if not an ally, I have to accept that Phaing is trying to work in our best interests as _she_ sees them, and has been from the start. But I’m not sure that we are better off with her as a friend or as an enemy.”

I looked down on the deck, my jaw tightening. “And she is probably feeling exactly the same way about us. At least every free-booter between here and the Western ocean isn’t mounting a Dragon-slaying expedition, and giving Merrin an excuse to do Gods-know-what.”

“Not _yet_.” Imriel waved the Captain to come closer, and asked to be taken on a tour of the ship’s armory. Joscelin went with him.

Phedre and I lingered there at the railing, giving Isolde' and the rest time to recover, and finish setting the table. She leaned back on the rail facing forward and put a companionable arm around my waist while I looked aft at what would be our last view of the mainland for a long time. I put my arm around her middle, keeping her close by my side and wondering how many times my mother had stood with her thusly. “What are they hiding?”

Phe'dre smiled. “Hrolvath, and Marko? A woman, or a girl, more likely.”

“One that Marko fancied, and brought back with him to wed?” I asked.

She nodded, continuing the game. “Very good! Phaing’s query about starting a family makes much more sense now, does it not? But, why try to hide it, have you a theory?”

“Mayhap. They didn’t know us, after all. A third witness would have made them seem more believable, so why leave her behind? A Carthaginian, she _must_ be. I can almost see it now, she somehow survived the ship she was on when it sank, or maybe it didn’t sink completely, and after waiting as long as she could, she swam ashore. Yes… she emerges from the surf before Marko’s wondering eyes, and he gives her his shirt like the gallant young man he is. Hrolvath is there too, and he understands, encouraging them both while planning his future with the Balbo House in his debt. But…. no, it’s a nice little story, why hide it from us?”

“You said yourself that they didn’t know us, only _about_ us. If they thought we had the same goals as Phaing-“

“A scholar!” I put it all together at last. “She knows letters, the written language of Carthage. The last one alive perhaps!”

“Mayhap, and so they keep her a secret. After this is over, we should send them a letter, let them know she won’t have to live in secret for the rest of her life.” She left it like that, certain that we would be able to send that message, and that it would be true in the end.

 

 

 

***

 

Our men were quiet and thoughtful when we sat relaxing after dinner, but they did list the weaponry of our ship for us, in brief. There were 4 Balistea, none of which could fire at a wide enough arc or and a high enough angle to have much chance of hitting a Dragon on the wing. There were 6 Mangonels, similar to Balistea but much stouter, able to hurl stones of up to 10 pounds at a similar velocity as the arrow-launchers. Powerful weapons, firing through ports in the side of our ship, they had no chance at all of hitting Merrin unless he tried swimming up on us. And there were 70 armed and armored men on board, 25 of them had bows.We could out-fight any ship that we could not out-sail.  
And we had not a drop of poison, of any sort.

  
Imriel and Joscelin shook their heads and smiled at each other, and I had to beg to find out with they were thinking.

“Well, whenever this sort of thing has happened in the past, it always seemed that we were rather ill-equipped for it. But here we are, in a very comfortable ship with a fine crew and very well armed, and not even having to worry about food or … its just not like the usual thing, is it?” This he asked Phedre and Joscelin.

Instead of some recitation of the ups and downs of their adventures together, they glanced at each other, and then nodded. “No, its not. Not simply by virtue of the unusual creatures involved, the strangeness is deeper than that. Its as if we are coming into something late, _very_ late. Sacrifices have already been made… and somehow its up to us to make sure the results justify it all… I think.”

Joscelin favored Phedre with one of his smiles. “is that what the Gods are telling you?’

She shook her head. “No, no that was just me rambling.” She scratched her nose, eyes far away. “The only feeling, and that is all I am getting now, is a feeling of trepidation.”

“Then we should turn around!”

“I don’t think so, its not about us, or this, or…. I just don’t know!” But she did, and she was holding back on us again. That was upsetting to myself and Imriel, and we let her know that with level gazes as she tried to excuse herself and leave for the cabin she shared with Joscelin. “Ah, alright!” She paused, leaning on the doorway. “Its not fear, exactly, trepidation as I said. Our Gods, are feeling it, for their _own_ part, I believe. Goodnight.”

Another sleepless night, another suspicion that all knowledge might not be worth having.


	12. Chapter 12

 

 

 

With the change in course the wind was behind us, allowing us to gain on Phaing, however our luck only lasted one more day. Soon the wind shifted, coming from the north fitfully, then strongly enough to incapacitate Joscelin with sea-sickness again.

It took twice as long to reach the sea of Hellas as the previous leg of the journey had. North of Criti we shouted out our questions, and we received just enough confirmation that the ship with Horizon-Blue sails was still ahead of us to continue on with some confidence. Leaving the Sea of Hellas after another week of sailing was different, not only in loosing the trail in every way, but the wind became less reliable than ever. With Cytheria within easy reach, we felt more lost than ever, and more anxious.

  
To give ourselves and the crew something to do, we decided to alter our ship's appearance a little. The decorative gilt-edged lanterns were removed and replaced with some more functional ones from the ship's stores. The blue band along the hull was painted over in a red & white checkered pattern. Colorful banners were packed away, and soon only the Flag flying from the fore-mast identified us as the Royal conveyance that we were. It was a heavy, fringed flag that would be taken down at the first sign of foul weather.

The wind from the North had been a premature attempt from Winter to assert itself. Summer lashed back with a storm from the south. The crew was glad that it had not hit us until we were clear of that narrow sea, dotted with islands and rocks for us to go crashing into, or onto. We had all heard about Imriel’s shipwreck in that miserable northern ocean, about how Pirates roamed this Sea, and there were other unpleasant things to consider… but unless you have ever been in a real storm at sea, you can’t imagine what it a worthless word ' _unpleasant_ ' is.

Joscelin’s sea-sickness returned and doubled, he thought he was going to die. He wasn’t alone.

It was impossible to keep notes, and I have no desire to recall that horrible 2-day ride through hell in any great detail. We huddled in the chartroom, the safest part of the highest deck. Imriel was there when he wasn’t out on deck, and I begrudged him every moment he spent out there. I still thank the gods daily that he was inside with us when the ship broached sideways with a wave, and then dropped off into the trough… a heart-stopping drop fifteen feet straight down.

The noise was tremendous, the ship sounded like it was coming apart, and everything in the ship that was made of glass or ceramic was broken, loudly. Imriel would have rushed right out if I had not followed him with every intention of going out there with him. Four sailors had vanished overboard and one more was killed tumbling down a staircase. The ship staggered, righted itself and trudged on.

That storm plagued us from the dawn of the one day to sunset of the next, and as the hours dragged on the winds came at us from every direction of the compass. During those first hours, I learned how monotonous fear can become. At first every sharp dip, every wave that nearly turned the deck diagonal, made me tense up or want to cry out. By the end, I had to be awakened to find out the storm was blowing itself out. Before I had reached that point, Phedre and I had taken to singing, in defiance of the crushing combination of boredom, noise, and the grinding fear. It had such a salutary effect on the men nearby that we started moving about the ship below decks, visiting various compartments and doing our best to lift the crew’s spirits. Considering our rather average voices, it worked very well. What I remember about those hours was the feeling of helplessness in the dark, damp hold where men labored at the pumps and others lay where wherever they could to catch a bit of rest. We saw parts of the ship that I never would have otherwise, but the significance of it did not register in my mind until we found ourselves on a very different ship.

Somewhere along the way, half the bowsprit was torn clear off. That was where the only sails fully unfurled had been, pulling from the very front of the ship to keep our nose running with the storm. Extra sail had to be risked on the foremast, a gamble that worked but in the end pulled us north in the wake of the storm, far off course. At least the storm didn’t throw us west, the opposite way we wanted to go, but being thrown towards Ephesus was no joyful thing. When a clear morning broke at last, there was a landmass on our left so vast that I thought was the mainland.

“Rhodos.” The Captain corrected me. “More or less Hellenic, ancient, civilized and friendly for all that. Sad to say, we have to put in to port for a while. The damage is too great to continue with safely, and we need to sound out the hull.” And there was no gainsaying him in this. In matters concerning the safety of this ship and its passengers, the Captain had final say, even over the Dauphin’s wishes. My wishes at that point were in accord with everyone that wanted to get off that ship and breathe easy on land for the first time in a month.

The port city of Rhodos was located at the far north of the island, taking us as far out of our way as possible. Imriel fretted, but there was nothing we could do at this point. With the least bit of luck behind her, Phaing was already within sight of Cytheria. It was mid-afternoon when the pilot boat met us to guide us into the compact, efficient harbor. It was the hottest part of a hot, humid day, but we were all on deck to have a look around. In ages past, this rich little trading post had erected a statue that proved too tall to survive the earthquakes that haunt this part of the world. It had been melted down and re-cast as a smaller pair that still stood. On our left was a warrior with legs spread wide and leaning on a spear, on the right was a woman who’s wide-spread hem made for a very solid foundation. I asked Phaedra who they were, and she had begun to tell the tale of a warrior who had saved a Princess from a gruesome sacrifice, when the lookout high above blew 3 short and one long blast from his whistle. The Captain took one look ahead and to the right, and then said in a voice that was only a little loud, but very intense;

“Nobles get down, _hit the deck_!” and with thoughts of ambush in our heads, we didn’t hesitate. “The rest of you, keep going about your duties! Van, go make sure all the Guards in armor stay out of sight. I’ll be right behind you and anyone that gives you any guff will be in irons tonight. Go!” We must have been looking up at him with some intensity of our own, and the Captain said to us; “See my eyes? I’m looking straight at a 3-masted ship with furled sails, and they are all sky-blue. In less than a minute, we will be passing 100 feet from their stern. Please, if we have any hope of surprising them, don’t let them see you.”

We were not on the highest deck, the sidewall of the ship was solid up to waist-height here, rather than a railing with some lattice. I crawled swiftly as I could in my white silken finery and put my back to that wall. From the purse sewn into my skirt, I slipped a small vanity mirror and held it up, trying to catch sight of the ship in its reflection. Imriel was at my side immediately and helped me aim it properly. The side of his head pressed to mine, I felt him smile when we saw it.

Phaing’s ship was tied to a dock just inside the harbor, and looked to have been there for a day or more. Only half a dozen crew were visible, and none seemed very busy. They strolled about, checking things here and there on a deck that looked free of clutter, and much cleaner than our own battered ship. We passed aft and one of the men near the tiller looked at our ship, we both held our breath at the way he squinted at us. I did not believe a poor paint-job could fool him, and I drew in a breath to shout out an order to attack, but I had not reckoned on how radically our fore-shortened bowsprit and other storm damage had changed the look of our ship. A boy came up to ask that man something, and he conversed for a moment and then walked away, not looking at us again. I let out the breath I had been holding, and felt Imriel laugh silently at my side. He angled the mirror up, to a small pennant colored to pretend that the ship was D’Angeline. And then downward as we passed, at a new name-plank that showed the ship’s name; _L’ Indiscreet_. “Not a trace of storm-damage, the sneaky bitch went straight here once clear of Criti, or even before.”

“I’d like to revise my opinion of how friendly an alliance we could have with this stranger.” I said through a tight smile.

“Still interested in meeting her?”

“Oh, she’s not getting away _this_ time!” Joscelin and Phedre had joined us by then, and I explained what we had seen. My smile broadened as I finished, and added; “Its time to start planning a bit of Piracy for tonight. I want her, and I want her ship too.”

This was the better part of an adventure, the part that gave me a tingle and made me feel so very strong and alive.

 

 

***

However, in the next 3 hours, I came to realize that I would be playing no direct part in it. The fact was that I had no skills to contribute to an assault on an armed ship. I would be a liability since my presence would split the attention of the guards for one, and Imriel for another. “My love, please understand...”

 

Imriel was right, of course, this was not my sort of battlefield. Shamefully perhaps, I did recall how Phaing bypassed me that night, and when I did I was not so eager for another confrontation with that woman. Not when she was armed and dangerous. That was the shameful part… I wanted to confront her, but not when she had a weapon in her hand. Neither did I want to sit perched in some throne-like chair on this ship while our men were out risking their necks so that they could bring her back in chains to throw her at my feet. Thinking about such options made me want to take a bath… and so I decided to do just that. I went to Phedre and we made plans of our own. Plans that included a hot bath and time away from a ship that reeked of vomit and spilled, rotting food… not to mention the mess that the horses had made in the hold.

At sunset we split into three groups. Imriel and Joscelin would lead a dozen men on foot around the harbor to the dock where L’Indiscreet was tied. At the same time a pair of longboats would glide in with twice as many more men aboard and take the ship from the other side. The men wearing armor would wear cloaks, the rest would be dressed as ordinary seamen. If all went well, we would have that ship and all aboard before any alarm could be sounded, and before our rather illegal activity in a foreign port discovered. Of course, the worst fear was that Phaing would not be there, and we had to work quickly. The presence of a big d’Angline ship would be noted and reported to her, if it had not been already. The third group consisted of myself, Phedre, Ti-Phillipe and a pair of guards well-cloaked, trailing in the path of Imogen and another guard who had gone ahead to secure us lodgings in the best Inn, one with baths made ready for us before we arrived.

It may seem odd that this was my plan, unless you have spent nearly a month with nothing but a sponge and a bowl of stale water to clean yourself on occasion, in a wet and salty place. Nobody on the ship grudged us this, and there was another reason for us to be away; if things went wrong, we had just the thinnest of excuses for what we were doing. Helpfully, Phaing had played into our hands by choosing to imitate a D’Angline ship, but if things turned violent the local authorities would have questions. Twilight Rhapsody was moored deep in the harbor, and getting it past the breakwater could take an hour or more. Having Phedre and myself ashore with capable Guards, ready to fade into the interior of the island that night, was a good precaution.

It was a rather fine place we found ourselves walking into, or at least it looked that way when we arrived. It was after dark and an array of colorful lamps added warmth to the inside of the stone building. Sending Imogen an hour ahead had allowed her to set things up for us to walk straight from the main room and into the back where baths were ready for us. There was a chamber to one side, a small communal pool from which rowdy voices could be heard, and there was a very different chamber set aside for us. This one was quiet, two female servants awaiting us next to a pair of copper tubs large enough to stretch out in a little. I could not wait to get into the water, and it was as warm as I had hoped for. The girls helping us understood enough Caredicci to be very helpful, and I would have been tempted to fall asleep in the luxurious, scented water were it not for worry about what was happening to Imriel at that very moment. I could not speak to Phedre about that, or anything else important, the chance that we could be overheard by someone speaking our language was too great, and I lacked her command of exotic languages. It was she who became bored with the bath before I did, and she rose, dried and changed before I was even ready to get out of the tub. She had Imogen show her to the room we had rented, one that was purported to have a view of the harbor, but I believed it wishful thinking that any of its windows would show us what we wanted to see.

I lingered while my woolen traveling clothes were dried, Ti-Phillipe watching over the entrance to this room from a discrete distance, and hopefully he was avoiding being pulled into the male bathing chamber. I sat there in the tub, head down and hair in the water. What lay at the end, Cytheria? Ironic to recall that we had spoken of making this very trip someday, Imriel and I, but not for years yet. Hopefully with a child or two for Melisandre to meet …and myself... for the first time. I had never met the woman who had played such a large part in shaping my life and my world, and I had wanted to. Over all other considerations; she was Imriel’s mother, and had played a vital role in reuniting us as well as saving our Kingdom. Now, would we have to turn back, so close to her? Would we have to go on, only to find she had a hand in all of this?

That ship was being taken now, and I was imagining what was happening there, trying to force myself out of the tub and make ready to face the news of what had transpired, when another female patron entered the room and had a brief, hushed conversation with the remaining servant present. I sighed, it was past time for me to get moving, yet I wanted to wait until this new woman was in her tub and the servant was free to help me dry off. Then, disappointingly, the servant left the room, sent on an errand by the new arrival. I was pulling my hair out of my eyes when she passed in front of me. Darkly bronzed skin that I could only see from the tummy down at first glance, and the absence of pubic hair made me think it was a very young woman before me, but only for the briefest instant. I stood straight up in the tub and blinked at an impossible sight. Phaing stood 2 feet from me. At first she sneered at my shocked reaction to her appearance, but an eye-blink later she recognized me as well. Phaing was more amazed to see me than I was at her.

“YOU? _How_ …” Her head snapped around to look at where her clothes were, and her sword belt hanging from a peg in the wall. There are times when our bodies do things without thinking, and I have never been more proud of my body than on that night. The very next thing I remember, I was lunging forward and driving my forehead into her temple. Oh, I saw stars and bruised my hands and legs stumbling forward out of the tub, and falling across her legs, but Phaing was much worse off. Her race and ours have rather vulnerable skulls between the ears and the upper forehead. Phaing lay dazed and barely moving until I grabbed her legs and yelled; “ _SHE"S IN HERE!_ ” at the top of my lungs.

That yell brought silence from outside, and then the sound of rushing feet. Phaing became more energized, but was not any more coordinated as she started to struggle and tried to kick free. I saw something on the sole of her right foot that almost made me lose my grip, and she was closer to her weaponry than I was. She twisted around face up  to weaken my grip, she was going to get free, until Ti-Phillipe burst in, and brought his boot down on her sternum with carefully measured force. Phaing gasped, or tried to, and within a handful of heartbeats she passed out. It was a brutal technique, far more effective than strangulation around the neck, but I was grateful that he simply hadn’t kicked her in the head. My own head was hurting , and 2 hard knocks to Phaing’s head in a row could have given her an excuse to avoid answering our questions.

Phaing looked very different unconscious, peaceful, yes, but also frightfully young. If there was any hair growing on her body below the neckline, I could not spot it. When Ti-Phillipe counted to 5 and pulled away, the impression his boot had left remained for a moment, and he could not take his eyes away from her figure, sprawled out on the floor. I wrapped myself in a towel while he was distracted. Before the approaching footfalls brought more people here, I took another quick look at her. Short and slender she was, not imposing at all, and certainly nothing to suggest what I had seen on that Kyrnos roadway. I had to drag my gaze away from her feet, that was something to focus on later. Her hips did have a certain flare, men would like that, and an 18-inch waist that emphasized it well. Her breasts were neither small nor large, but beautifully shaped with large reddish aureole. Her face was delicate, as vulnerable looking as the rest of her… and Hrolvath’s words came back to me; Yes, an interesting way for people to look, the planes of her face being boldly sensual even at rest. Hair like old gold with streaks of mahogany, and those remarkable ears were not unattractive at all, but they did look irritated, as if she had been hiding them too long under her hair or hoods. I tore a strip off my towel off to tie her hands, and another for her feet. Her hands had fighter’s callouses, but not many and not large ones, as if she barely practiced anymore. She wore 4 mismatched rings that I left in place.

I had tied her hands when a man appeared at the doorway wearing just a towel. He was a solidly built and black-bearded Hellene that goggled at the sight of Phaing on the floor and Ti-Phillepe gagging her with his bandana.

“Jorsia!” He barked, and was about to enter the room when he was shouldered out of the way by one of my Guardsmen, and Phedre slipped into the room. Her mouth dropped open when she saw what had happened, and a triumphant smile was spreading across her face, until she saw Phaing’s right foot. The smile fled and she looked nauseous, but still nodded to me and turned to confront the angry man who was an acquaintance of our prisoner.

“Oh, her name is not Jorsia, nor Phaing, but she _is_ a Spy and this _is_ a d’Angeline matter. Guards?” Our men let their cloaks drop, and their armor adorned with official crests did much to forestall an ugly complication, for the moment.

We still had to get out of there, with our captive. As luck would have it, there was not a carpet in sight.

I had tied Phaing’s hands on front of her, which is not the right way to do it, but Ti-Phillipe was good at thinking on his feet that night. “Gunny-sack!” he called to the Guards, and one produced a tightly folded empty sack and shook in out while Ti-Phillipe worked on Phaing. He sat her unconscious body on the floor and leaned her forward until he could get her hands past her feet, and then brought Her upright with her linked wrists under her bent knees. He lifted her carefully, folded in a tight fetal position and the Guard slipped the sack over her from bottom upwards. I later found out that many soldiers carry such light-weight bags in case unexpected booty turns up, or for a myriad of other purposes. In this case it helped to conceal, superficially, that we were abducting a naked woman from a semi-public bath.

While that was being done, I had slipped back into my own clothes without taking time for the underwear, and once again felt the cloying sensation of wool on my skin. It was damp this time, making the experience just that much more unpleasant, and reminding me what a fool had been back at Ajaccio for looking forward to this madness. I threw Phaing’s weapon’s belt over my shoulder and rolled up her clothes to pass them to Phedre. _Why are we doing this_? her look said to me, and the one I gave her back was meant to say _Are you kidding me?_

I think that the presence of 2 women in our party did just as much to ease our escape from that building as the pair of Guardsmen with sword’s drawn. Men are more or less the same anywhere, and the notion of a beautiful women being taken away by force is just as likely to lead to a violent reaction in Rhodos as in Siovale, for instance. Myself and Phedre complicated things, and the reluctance of men to involve themselves in the affairs of women caused just enough hesitation for our purpose. Some gathered at the doorway, and a couple of the more honorable ones looked ready to follow us… and that was when Imriel and Jocelyn turned the corner we were headed for and nearly ran into us.

“It was too easy, she wasn’t there.” Imriel said as he pushed past the Guards and came to hug me, and then held me at arms length when he saw the scimitar over my shoulder. “You can’t be serious.”

Ti-Phillipe hefted his package, and a stifled groan came from within. Joscelin smiled from ear to ear and put his arm around Phedre, but we had no time to celebrate or even explain anything. People were leaning out of windows, several men were indeed coming out of the Inn we had just left, and in the harbor below lamps that has been recently extinguished were being re-lit. Time had indeed run out for us if we wanted to avoid some serious complications.

“To _her_ ship! Don’t look at me, just trust me and let’s get going!” My mouth outpacing the rest of me, and Imriel had to put one arm around me to help propel me forward, in response to my own order as my mind whirled.

 

Going downhill, a quarter-hour trudge uphill became a dash lasting less than half that time. And the fact that we were taking our abductee to her own ship must have caused even more confusion and hesitation among the people of that Inn. When we arrived I could see that the large round tower across the harbor, the primary defense of this place, was coming awake. There simply would have been no time to get Twilight Harmony out of there, but the Indiscreet was another matter. Nine sailors, half the crew, had been captured aboard after a brief struggle that had been too great a surprise to be called a fight. Those 9 were made to kneel on the deck with their hands tied behind their back, and this was how we found them.

“If you have any loyalty to your Captain, you will get us out of this place immediately!” I told them, and nodded to Ti-Phillipe. He undid the drawstring and let them see her face. Phaing was awake now and looking upset, but I stepped into her field of vision and tapped her belt. She nodded to her men, who did indeed have a care for her safety, some had come up onto their feet. Once she repeated the nod a man among the captive crew started barking orders;

“Alright , if you want to avoid a battle with the Port Authority, cut our hands loose and get your boats out of here. We can’t man the sweeps if your damn boats are in the way! And chop the lines, we don’t have time to untie from the dock if you want to avoid a rain of arrows.”

I think that what may have motivated them, the crew of the Indiscreet, was two-fold; Ti-Phillipe had placed the sack Phaing was in at the base of the foremast. If arrows started flying at the ship, she would have been the first to be hit. And, as I learned later, they were planning on a counter-coupe at sea, where there would be fewer of us. This was something I had not even thought of yet, not until Imriel started issuing orders of his own (after a quick, hushed conversation with Phaedra);

  
“Lieutenant! Choose 8 of your best Marines to stay with us here, send the rest back to Twilight Rhapsody. Ti-Phillipe; inform the Captain that we _know_ it will take at least 2 weeks to repair the storm damage, but he is to follow us as best he can the very moment he is able to do so.” Having spent a quarter-century working in a house of intrigue, Ti-Phillipe hesitated only long enough to blink his eyes before nodding, and glancing and Joscelin for confirmation. By now a crowd had gathered at the base of the pier, and so all the rest of our men remaining piled into the longboats.

  
“Follow you we shall, to…. Cytheria?”

“Yes, of course.” I called out to them, catching on to the game and grinning at Imriel. “Where else would we be going?” But Imriel’s smile faded a bit, that was in fact the very place we _had_ to go now.

Our Marines were not our Personal Guard, these were men who knew how to fight and how to crew a ship, and they went straight to helping with the sweeps. ‘Sweeps’ are nothing but long oars, similar to what a Galley has. Indiscreet had only 5 to a side, but that was enough to leave harbor without assistance and to ignore the late and half-hearted calls from the tower to stop and ‘clarify the situation’. Once we are out of sight of land, which was accomplished swiftly on a dark night, we were no longer their concern.


	13. Chapter 13

... and then there was Phaing.  
  
Still in her white gunny sack and surrounded by three Marines with weapons drawn, she leaned her head back on the mast and feigned sleep. An hour into our voyage we could still see some of the lights of Rhodos behind us, and our combined crew seemed to be done arguing with each other, for the time being. It had been touch-and-go, our Marines not being familiar with Lateen-rigged sails, yet also being in nominal command of the situation. There had been blows traded, confusion abounded and if anyone had been pursuing us they could have had us with ease. Without Imriel, I don’t think we’d have ever been able to sort things out. He alone had the stature to make himself obeyed and also knew enough about ships to say all the things required to get the attention of the sailors from both ships, bending them to a common purpose. Phedre was aft near the tiller, to keep an eye on our true heading, and Jocelyn was there to guard her. Imriel was everywhere, and so I lingered at the bow with the three Marines watching over Phaing. I waited so long partly because it took that long for all 3 sails to be set in such a way that they all held the same sort of wind… I still don’t know what the correct terminology for such things is. When we had things under control but before Imriel returned to my side. I took four quick steps and went to one knee at Phaing’s side, a drawn dagger in my hand. Her eyes flashed open and held mine in a level stare. I reached behind her head and undid the gag with one smooth yank, and pulled my hand away as she spat the thing out.  
  
Phaing merely shook her head, worked her jaw the way most people do after being un-gaged, and spared my blade a glance at last. And of course, she recognized it. “So, what are you supposed to be, my nemesis or some such thing?”  
  
Her voice was not enchanting, tired and scratchy and speaking very functional d'Angeline. “I happen to be Princess Sidonie’, perhaps you have heard of me.”  
  
“Pleased to meet ya.” She said, clearly meaning the opposite. “First of all, you let me out of this sack right now so I can use the Jakes over there,” she nodded at the bowspirit less than 10 paces away, “or else I’m might load this sack up at any second with enough shit & piss to ruin our whole little get-together, you savvy?”  
  
As beginnings go, that was about as repulsive and off-putting as I could have imagined. And, what she said was probably true; the commode was the last stop people generally made on the way to the bathtub, and I had been the one to interrupt her. I nodded to the closest Marine, and he took a quick look. “A pretty standard set-up, Madame. A pair of privy holes, no privacy… what’s the little pot on a chain for?”  
  
He’d asked that last bit of Phaing, who responded in the same military patios; “To raise enough water to wash yer’ arse with, what’dya think?”  
  
“Oh, fancy. A spoon & a sponge ‘salways been good enough for the likes of us.”  
  
Of all the damned things I had to hear on that trip that I wished I hadn’t… that would rank somewhere in the mid-twenties, I should think.  
  
I used the Dagger to cut the draw-string, too impatient to fiddle with the knot. It did me a smallish bit of satisfaction to see Phaing keeping a close eye one where that blade was going. The Marine Lieutenant helping us, Jharroque by name, tugged the gunny sack down and gave me a sharp look, and nodded at the hasty binding I tied on her wrists, which were still in place. I think I could have slipped from of them in an hour myself, but Phaing only lifted her legs and swung the wrists up for us to see. “So? I’m not much of an escape artist if I can’t see what I’m doing and my hands are falling asleep, which they _are_ , thank you very much. You mind?”  
  
I allowed Jharroque to take care of that while I slipped back a few feet and knelt on her bundle of clothes that I had taken from the Inn. I worked loose a silken shift, an undergarment for the rather nice dress she had hung next to the rest of her gear. I was about to give it to her when she slipped free of the Marine and with a barely audible “thanks” she scuttled over the Bow and out of sight, still naked.  
  
Jharroque’s only comment was “She really _did_ have to go.”  
  
_Go_ was the word that snapped my mind to attention, and Imriel’s as well. He’d been keeping a close eye on my interaction with Phaing from near the mainmast, he covered the whole distance to the Bow just as quickly as I did despite my lead, before I even knew he was coming. We looked over the edge saw that instead of vanishing into the darkness, she was sitting on one of the “Jakes” and looking up at us with an indulgent smile. She winked at Imriel and pointed at the second of the open-air toilets and said; “Ah, hello. As you can see, there is always room for one more, hon-“  
  
My aim was good; I hit her full in the face with her own underwear and it unfolded to ruin Imriel’s view. We walked back to the foremast together and told the Marines to do another quick search of the lower decks, while we pondered what to do next.  
  
“Cytheria?” I asked Imriel. “We have taken that course again, after all?”

  
He sighed and straightened out his back, hands on his hips and looking up at the sails, at the railings, anywhere but the bow behind us. “I really don’t know what else to do. Laying a false trail at the outset would be the usual thing, but I hope you are not feeling the way I am now. Now that we… _you,_ I mean, caught Phaing, what do we do now? Bah, why Cytheria?... what I’d like to know is, why was she leading us that way in the 1st place.”  
  
“Maybe we should ask her.”  
  
“Yeah, maybe you should.” Phaing swung herself over the bow and stepped up to us, her eye on the weapons belt I still had slung over my shoulder. “But maybe there is something else you’d rather have me say first. Like, to the crew?” She seemed to mean business now, a sober look on her face. The white linen shift would make it impossible for her to fade into the shadows. Still, there was nothing in her face or her posture that had a very defeated look.  
  
I shook my head. “Sorry, but before I let you do us any more favors,” and I deliberately laid all the sarcasm I could into that last word, “before I let you talk to anyone, miss Phaing, answer the question. Why Cytheria?”  
  
“Fine.” She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t hesitate either. “I was being mean, but your husband did have me in a death-grip. Had to say something to make him let go before I ran out of air. And afterwards, seemed like a good idea. Familiar turf for me, and a nice reunion for you folks.”  
  
Imriel let out a scoffing laugh. “Oh, for Phedre and Joscelin as well? Yes, brilliant, is there nothing you won’t do to try to distract us from that Dragon?”  
  
“Aw _shit_!”  
  
“Yes, we know about your Merrin, and what really happened at Carthage.” I’d had enough of taking this one step at a time.  
  
Phaing was shaking her head already. “No… really? Then why are you still following me?”  
  
“Because you are the only person we've heard of that knows anything about this Dragon. You went to Carthage because of him and then sent us a letter lying about everything that you could. You may even be the reason Merrin spared anyone at all, and YOU are the only person who knows why.” I took a step closer to her, keeping one hand over the belt. “Who else in this whole wide world do you think we would _want_ to speak to?”  
  
She slapped her hand to her own forehead and closed her eyes. “I’m such a goddamned retard.” Her use of our language was not just alien, but repellant at times like that. “And how did you find me at Rhodos, of all places?”  
  
“The storm blew us there.” I wasn’t going to say anything, but Imriel’s words hand a further quieting effect on Phaing. She peeked out at him from between her fingers and asked softly;

  
“The storm, that was _it_?”  
  
“Yes.” I pounced, sensing that her insolence was gone. “it would seem that our Gods themselves have been taking a hand in this affair from the moment you sent us that note. Does it not seem that way to you, since despite all your efforts, well… here we are, yes?”  
  
She let her hand drop and looked away. “If only you knew-“

  
“Yes, that’s the issue, we _will_ know, once you have the nerve and the intelligence to tell us the truth. But for now, it is time you have that talk to your people, and let them know what the new reality is here.” I had felt good about pouncing on Phaing’s moment of weakness, until she gave me a look of pity that had such a dreadful portent that even Imriel drew in a sudden breath.  
  
“Reality? Young Lady, I dearly do hope that your view of reality can survive what you are going to make me tell you. I really do.”  
  
Phaing walked past us with a measured tread, her bare feet silent on the deck as we followed. The only sign she gave along the way was to hold up one hand over her head and snap her fingers three times, and point to the stairway to the poop-deck. More people must have been watching us than I had known, every member of the crew seemed to be assembling there as we arrived. This low, sleek ship had only one raised deck, aft, and only one steep staircase leading up to it. She mounted those stairs and turned to face the crew, leaning on the rail with a grim, apologetic look on her face. All 9 of her people were on the deck below, even the man at the tiller had been replaced by one of our Marines, and her people were flanked by half a dozen of our men, all armed and standing ready.  
  
“Listen, things are different now. The d’Angalines are in charge and you’ll be fine as long as you do as your told. Go ahead an' cut up spare sailcloth, make hammocks, I doan’ think the Royals will want to share the pillow room.” There were some mutters and grimaces at that, “Oh, yes, it’s the ones that have been chasing us. Allow me to introduce the Countess Phedre d’ Montreve and her consort Joscelin Verreuil. And here we have Princess Sidonie and Prince Imriel, another couple who’s exploits you may have heard of.” She had been speaking in a slightly sour monotone, but now her voice dipped to a lower, more cozy tone as she added. “Watch out for the blond, she got the drop on me twice so far.” It was oddly satisfying to see her sailors blink and do a double-take in my direction, but I still wanted to strangle Phaing for saying that aloud. “That’s all, just keep in mind that this ship is under new management, that I order you to follow their instructions, and that I’m off duty starting immediately.”  
  
Phaing started to turn away, but before she could meet our eyes and see the looks we were giving her (none of us thought that she’d made a very good job of it) something made her glance back at her crew. Half of them were exchanging glances or trying to give her a sly sign of their own. She caught that and Phaing instantly went into one of her jagged little rages. In a low voice she grated “Don’t do it don’t do it don’t you fucking dare,” as her feet pounded down the stairs and she lunged at her own crewmen, grabbing 2 of them by the collars and giving them a good shake before we or the Marines could stop here. By the gods, those tough sailors with twice her mass did seem to be afraid of her… that tiny unarmed woman with bird-like bones and those funny ears.  
  
“Alright, you knuckleheads!” She barked at them, her voice ringing like nails being hammered into a timber. “Let me make myself perfectly clear; if any of you causes harm to any of my guests, or by inaction allows any harm to come to them… I will rip the skin right off your faces and ram it down your throats. Are ye’ hearin’ me NOW, my cute little bastards?!”  
  
“Yes ma-am!” All of them had been taken aback, and when she let go the men she had grabbed they staggered a few steps away from her.

“Glad ta' hear it. Now, if’n y’all doan’ mind, I’m goin' ta bed.” She entered the aft compartments and slammed the door behind her with considerable force.

  
I was so bemused by the scene that some time went by before I realized that Phaing had gone ahead of us, and was out of sight and unsupervised. Instead, I was at Imriel’s side as he came down to the main deck and asked one of the crewmen Phaing had roughed up;  
“Your Lady certainly is one for the bluster, isn’t she?”  
  
The man in question gave Imriel an uncomprehending look, and then glanced at the closed door. “Bluster?” The poor man was still a little shaken. “Sir, if you plan to go in there, I think my new orders require me to tell you… it _ain’t_ bluster. Sometimes, when she starts talking like that, its already too late to stop her from doing exactly what she is talking about.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Part One.  
> I apologize for the typos in the earlier chapters, I was drawing off the wrong draft. All cleaned up now, all I have to do is remove the WIP tag.
> 
> Part Two will be starting up in a couple of days, any comments?


End file.
